1> If theory doesn't help you understand yourself
and the world around you, it's not worth doing. (But this doesn't mean it's
not challenging).
2> Think in terms of tools, not schools. People come up with these
ideas because they help them solve problems, and we should use them to do
the same.
3> Theory begins with your reaction to a literary text. What puzzles,
interests, or excites you? We turn to theory to explore and better understand
these questions.
4> Textual structures encourage effects. When we note an effect that
a text has on us, we can work back from the effect (this made me sad, or
seemed really weird, or bored, or excited, or unnerved me) to the structures
that encouraged that effect.
5> Interpretations of literature are never definitively right or wrong,
merely plausible or implausible in a given context. Our task as theorists
is to shape our ideas about literature in a way that other people who have
thought about it find plausible and interesting.
6> Theoretical approaches are rarely mutually exclusive. Most critics
use ideas from a variety of backgrounds to try to understand a text.
7> Some paradigms for thinking about literature are so pervasive that
most influential critics publishing today take them as a point of departure.
Deconstruction and poststructuralism fit into this category.
Similarly, most critics would agree that issues like gender, first raised
by feminist critics, or social class, first raised by Marxist critics, are
important to understanding literature, even if there is spirited disagreement
about how best to explore the issues.
Hedges English 300 Winter 97