5th & 6th blog assignment

　

Summary
Tackling Textuality With Theory illustrates different ways of interpreting literary works, focused on that with literary theories. When we interpret a literary work without using any theory, ‘close-reading’ in other words, there are ten factors considered in the process: structures, similarity beneath apparent dissimilarity or vice-versa, distinction between apparent content and real content, meaning and significance, genre, important literal words to maintain, micro-patterns like tone or register, stages, and linguistic background of the work. However, exterior elements should also be considered to help look into four major aspects of relationship between literature and world. They are literature and history, language, gender and psychoanalysis, exemplified through Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73 in the article. Moreover, the writer argues that the use of ‘deconstructive reading’ is a very useful way of interpreting literature; deconstructive reading is “characterized by disunity rather than unity,” contrary to close-reading whose aim is to show a unity. When a theorist uses deconstructing way of reading, four big techniques can be found in a work: contradictions, linguistic quirks and aporia, breaks, and omissions.


Keywords
Double message
Interpretation
Close-reading
Deconstructive reading
Impossibility of reading


Paraphrasing
When we re-read a literary work, we should look into both inside and outside of it—both close-reading that is about tones, words, genre, etc, and broad literary theories about relationship between literature and its backgrounds. However, another type of inward reading, deconstructive reading, is an interesting way of interpretation, in terms of its characteristic to make literary works almost non-readable. Though it still brings up more difficulties when reading literature, literary theory helps understand how one literary work is bond with other elements and also have fun of the process.


Quoting
(What is deconstruction?) “revealing fault-lines of doubt and contradiction within it.”
“‘textual harassment’ and oppositional reading’”
“it is characterized by disunity rather than unity.”


Review
It is an interesting article to read. I could get novel knowledge and information about interpretation of literature with detailed examples and explanations. Overall structure makes it easy to follow, but I’d been better if the writer illustrates merits or reasons of using literary theory in a big picture more in the conclusion.