Objectives

The purpose of this Lesson on reading strategies (or styles) is to help you think about reading literature. How does it differ from reading anything else? Why do people frequently read the same works, especially literary works, differently from the way others read them?

How do our styles, backgrounds, value systems, and beliefs, help create different ideas about the meaning of what we read? And given these differences, what accounts for the astonishing fact that we can arrive at agreement about meaning even more frequently?

Most of us agree that not just anything goes in reading and that not all readings are of the same weight. We resist the idea that meaning is merely a "matter of opinion." And we tend to agree there are powerful readings--insightful ones that make us gasp and say to ourselves, "Of course! Why didn't I see that?" But we also insist on keeping open the possibility of new insights and angles on meaning.