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The decision to apply a theoretical model to a work of literature represents the initiation of an analytical process that has several implications; firstly, it registers a critical attitude to the status of the literary text in the scholarly process, and signals the centrality or otherwise of the specificity of the text in the process of reading. Secondly, the decision to read in one way, as opposed to another, usually indicates an ethical, aesthetic, political, or formal position on the part of the reader and, in turn, the world of the text is filtered through this framing-position. One could argue that these positions are not necessarily, in principle, mutually-exclusive but in practice they are very often so. By extension, pedagogically speaking, when one formulates a university literature module, it is frequently with a theory (or theories) of reading in mind, the consequence of which is that one inevitably contextualizes the primary literary text by accommodating the model being endorsed. In some cases a theory of society, or history, or culture, is implicitly championed, and the text in question subsequently becomes a function of the theoretical process.

DOI: 10.1057/9780230304727_10

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