Your Guide to Multiple Reading Practices in Literature

Your natural reaction to anything in life is generally a judgment, a natural human urge to make sense of your surroundings...similarly when applied to a reader's reaction to literature you can utilize different established approaches to making sense of texts. Dominant Reading: A Dominant Reading usually provides a reading of the text reflecting a broad consensus on what a text may mean, such a reading usually places a great deal of emphasis on how the reader believes the author has positioned them to respond. It is my personal opinion, that it is simply the 'mainstream' interpretation of a text which gains the de facto legitimacy of 'author approved' by sheer weight of numbers. The distinction between an Alternative Reading and a Resistant Reading, would probably be that an Alternative Reading is still heavily reliant on the text while a Resistant Reading implicitly requires to a greater extent ideological or contextual baggage which the reader uses to challenge the premise of a text. In fact a feminist reading, must, analyse the subconscious of the text in the way images are constructed, positioned and the order in which they occur; thereby providing a more definitive and profound implication for the politics of feminism. Post Colonial readings are linked very strongly with Marxist theory, best seen in the recurring use in post colonial discourse of the term 'subaltern' pioneered by Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. Problems facing a post colonial reading is best explored in Gayatri Spivak Charkravorty's landmark essay 'Can the Subaltern Speak' where she explores the role of the Post Colonial reader and his or her authority to articulate the voice of the subaltern. Marxist Readings emphasize this connection between 'Base' and 'Superstructure; Base refers to the economic system of a society which Marx suggested was best reflected in the relations between employers and labour and superstructure which refers to social institutions and literature in particular. Another important aspect is class consciousness, to what degree does a text promote awareness of class?