Some Questions Which May Help Direct Your Interpretation of Literature The following are questions from each area of literary interpretation mentioned in your book. You may find them helpful in trying to focus your paper into a certain literary school.
Formalist Questions: 1. How do various elements of the work--plot, character, point of view, setting, tone, diction, images, symbol, etc.--reinforce its meanings? 2. How are the elements related to the whole? 3. What is the work's major organizing principle? How is its structure unified? 4. What issues does the work raise? How does the work's structure resolve those issues? Biographical Questions: 1. Are there facts about the writer's life relevant to your understanding of the work? 2. Are characters and incidents in the work versions of the writer's own experiences? Are they treated factually or imaginatively? 3. How do you think the writer's values are reflected in the work? Psychological Questions: 1. How does the work reflect the author's personal psychology? 2. What do the character's emotions and behavior reveal about their psychological states? What types of personalities are they? 3. Are psychological matters such as repression, dreams, and desire presented consciously or unconsciously by the author? Historical Questions: 1. How does the work reflect the period in which it is written? 2. How does the work reflect the period it represents? 3. What literary or historical influences helped to shape the form and content of the work? 4. How important is the historical context (both the work's and your own) to interpreting the work? Marxist Questions: 1. How are class difference present in the work? Are characters aware or unaware of the economic and social forces that affect their lives? 2. How do economic conditions determine the characters' lives? 3. What ideological values are explicit or implicit? Feminist Questions: 1. How are women's lives portrayed in the work? Do the women in the work accept or reject these roles? 2. Is the form and content of the work influenced by the author's gender? 3. What are the relationships between men and women? Are these relationships sources of conflict? Do they provide resolutions to conflicts? Mythological Questions: 1. How does the story resemble other stories in plot, character, setting, or use of symbols? 2. Are archetypes presented, such as questions, initiations, scapegoats, or withdrawals and returns? 3. Does the protagonist undergo any kind of transformation such as a movement from innocence to experience that seems archetypal? Reader Response: 1. How do you respond to the work? 2. How do your own experience and expectations affect your reading and interpretation? 3. What is the work's original or intended audience? To what extent are you similar or different from the audience? Deconstructionist Questions: 1. How are contradictory and opposing meanings expressed in the work? 2. How does meaning break down or deconstruct itself in the language of the text? 3. Would you say that ultimate definitive meanings are impossible to determine and establish in the text? Why? How does that effect your interpretation?
The following are questions from each area of literary interpretation mentioned in your book. You may find them helpful in trying to focus your paper into a certain literary school.
Formalist Questions:
1. How do various elements of the work--plot, character, point of view, setting, tone, diction, images, symbol, etc.--reinforce its meanings?
2. How are the elements related to the whole?
3. What is the work's major organizing principle? How is its structure unified?
4. What issues does the work raise? How does the work's structure resolve those issues?
Biographical Questions:
1. Are there facts about the writer's life relevant to your understanding of the work?
2. Are characters and incidents in the work versions of the writer's own experiences? Are they treated factually or imaginatively?
3. How do you think the writer's values are reflected in the work?
Psychological Questions:
1. How does the work reflect the author's personal psychology?
2. What do the character's emotions and behavior reveal about their psychological states? What types of personalities are they?
3. Are psychological matters such as repression, dreams, and desire presented consciously or unconsciously by the author?
Historical Questions:
1. How does the work reflect the period in which it is written?
2. How does the work reflect the period it represents?
3. What literary or historical influences helped to shape the form and content of the work?
4. How important is the historical context (both the work's and your own) to interpreting the work?
Marxist Questions:
1. How are class difference present in the work? Are characters aware or unaware of the economic and social forces that affect their lives?
2. How do economic conditions determine the characters' lives?
3. What ideological values are explicit or implicit?
Feminist Questions:
1. How are women's lives portrayed in the work? Do the women in the work accept or reject these roles?
2. Is the form and content of the work influenced by the author's gender?
3. What are the relationships between men and women? Are these relationships sources of conflict? Do they provide resolutions to conflicts?
Mythological Questions:
1. How does the story resemble other stories in plot, character, setting, or use of symbols?
2. Are archetypes presented, such as questions, initiations, scapegoats, or withdrawals and returns?
3. Does the protagonist undergo any kind of transformation such as a movement from innocence to experience that seems archetypal?
Reader Response:
1. How do you respond to the work?
2. How do your own experience and expectations affect your reading and interpretation?
3. What is the work's original or intended audience? To what extent are you similar or different from the audience?
Deconstructionist Questions:
1. How are contradictory and opposing meanings expressed in the work?
2. How does meaning break down or deconstruct itself in the language of the text?
3. Would you say that ultimate definitive meanings are impossible to determine and establish in the text? Why? How does that effect your interpretation?