Prelude VI

The prelude on reading through critical lenses highlights the value of multiple perspectives as ways to approach the experience of reading literary works. One way to extend and deepen our enjoyment and appreciation of literature is through varied critical approaches we can take in reading it. The varied perspectives that literary theories offer can be considered as heuristics, methods of problem solving that can lead to thinking discoveries. Each critical approach highlights particular aspects of a literary work, providing a lens through which to view it. In each case, the change of critical lens brings out qualities that might otherwise elude attention. Each critical lens temporarily foregrounds some aspects and features of literary works while relegating others to the background. Different literary theories also provide different “ways in” to a text, resulting in different understandings of what a work is “about” and what it says and suggests—hermeneutical concerns. Textual details analyzed through varied critical lenses direct readers towards different textual emphases and toward varied ways to understand and appreciate literary works. The imaginative élan and intellectual provocation of multiple critical literary perspectives can drive our thinking about literary works in unexpected directions. Literary theory, in short, can help us think about our thinking about literature. That may well be its most important and most valuable contribution to appreciating and understanding of literature. In this last part of the book, I provide brief descriptions of major critical approaches with a minimum of jargon. Readers can use the questions included with each critical lens to think about literature from that critical approach or perspective. I believe that readers will find the effort to do so rewarding, leading toward a fuller, more wide-ranging set of insights into literary works, and, I believe, increased pleasure in reading them. I explain a dozen perspectives or lenses through which readers can analyze and interpret literary works.