8/4/2019 Guide Critical Reading

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Based on handout prepared by M.A. Villaceran, UP Diliman

How to do a Critical Reading

1. Read the text carefully, write down marginal notes(questions raised by the text, insights, points you need toresearch on about cultural or historical context).

2. Look through your notes and find which method of criticalanalysis your notes are leaning toward.

3. Try to answer the questions or guidelines for the type ofcritical analysis you have chosen:

New Criticism:1. What complexities (or tensions, ironies, paradoxes,

oppositions, ambiguities) can you find in the text?2. What idea unifies the work, and therefore resolves

these ambiguities?3. What details or images support this resolution (that

is, connect the parts/elements to the whole?)

Reader-Response Criticism1. How do I respond to the work?2. How does the text aid in shaping my response?3. How might other readers respond to the text? Will

theirs differ from mine? What are the possible

reasons for these differing responses?

Deconstructive Criticism A1. Identify the oppositions in the text (X vs. Y).2. Determine which member of the opposition (X or Y)

appears to be favored.3. Look for evidence that contradicts that favoring.4. Expose the texts indeterminacy.

Deconstructive Criticism B1. What is the most obvious statement the text is

trying to make? What effect is it trying to create?2. How might the text tend also to create the very

attitude, feeling, or assumptions it is trying toremove? How does the text do or say contradictorythings? How does this contradiction influence thetexts effectiveness?

Biographical, Historical, or New Historical Criticism1. Determine the historical setting of the work.

Investigate the authors biography.2. Consider how the historical or biographical

background helps us understand the work. Or,consider how the work contradicts or stands apart

from the usual historical or biographicalbackground of its milieu.

3. Consider what other texts of the same time mightbe related to the text. Identify the ideology that isshaping this system of texts.

Psychological Criticism! Upon closer examination of the text, what

underlying meanings and significance can be found?

FeministCriticism! How does the piece try to move away from or

expose the dominant discourse (patriarchal texts orideologies)?

4. Try to come up with a thesis statement to focus your ideasand then draft an outline to organize your thoughts.

5. Now, write your papermake sure to include textualevidence and use the MLA Documentation Format.