Interpretation of the Text
P A R T 1. A N A L Y Z I N G F I C T I O N
MODULE 1 1.1. The fictional world of a literary work Literature is writing that can be read in many ways. We can read it as a form of history, biography, or autobiography. We can read it as an example of linguistic structures or rhetorical conventions manipulated for special effect. We can view it as a material product of the culture that produced it. We can see it as an expression of beliefs and values of a particular class. We can also see a work of literature as a selfcontained structure of words - as writing that calls attention to itself, to its own images and forms. Viewed in this light, literature differs from other kinds of writing - expressive, persuasive, and expository. Expressive writing aims to articulate the feelings of the writer; persuasive writing seeks co influence the reader; expository writing tries to explain the outer world. By contrast, a work of literature creates a world of its own which makes no reference to the real world as we normally know it, thus it is not expository writing. Nor is it quite the same as persuasive writing - a work of fiction makes no direct appeal to us as audience, no systematic effort to shape our opinions on a specified point. Furthermore, while it looks like expressive writing, it is not the writer but the narrator or a character who is speaking, i.e. the figures the writer has created or imagined. What we have, then, is an independent little world made of words: a world of forms, images, and sounds that are all designed to work together. This does not mean that works of literature have nothing to do with reality. On the contrary, Walt Whitman's poems often address the reader directly; Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn has everything to do with the history of American slavery; and when Emily Dickinson writes, "1 never hear the word escape Without a quicker •blood," she is surely expressing her ovm feelings. The "world of literature is watered by many streams - by the
MODULE 1 1.1. The fictional world of a literary work Literature is writing that can be read in many ways. We can read it as a form of history, biography, or autobiography. We can read it as an example of linguistic structures or rhetorical conventions manipulated for special effect. We can view it as a material product of the culture that produced it. We can see it as an expression of beliefs and values of a particular class. We can also see a work of literature as a selfcontained structure of words - as writing that calls attention to itself, to its own images and forms. Viewed in this light, literature differs from other kinds of writing - expressive, persuasive, and expository. Expressive writing aims to articulate the feelings of the writer; persuasive writing seeks co influence the reader; expository writing tries to explain the outer world. By contrast, a work of literature creates a world of its own which makes no reference to the real world as we normally know it, thus it is not expository writing. Nor is it quite the same as persuasive writing - a work of fiction makes no direct appeal to us as audience, no systematic effort to shape our opinions on a specified point. Furthermore, while it looks like expressive writing, it is not the writer but the narrator or a character who is speaking, i.e. the figures the writer has created or imagined. What we have, then, is an independent little world made of words: a world of forms, images, and sounds that are all designed to work together. This does not mean that works of literature have nothing to do with reality. On the contrary, Walt Whitman's poems often address the reader directly; Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn has everything to do with the history of American slavery; and when Emily Dickinson writes, "1 never hear the word escape Without a quicker •blood," she is surely expressing her ovm feelings. The "world of literature is watered by many streams - by the