Lexicon

• Intertextuality- The meaning of a text is affected by another text.

• Intentional Fallacy- There isn’t just one way to read a text. There is no right or wrong way to interpret a text.

• Always Already- human action can be narrated...because it is always already symbolically mediated. –(Paul Ricoeur)

• Allegory of Reading-

• Subtext- Undertone or underlying content.

• New Criticism- Belief that the meaning is all in the text. It does not consider the historical and cultural context or the reader response and Intention of the author. The new critic does not look through any critical lens and does not want to discuss anything beyond the surface.

• Reader Response Criticism-

• Affective Fallacy-

• Subjective Criticism-

• Interpretive Community-

• emasculated- Feeling of being unmanly.

• Contrapuntal Reading-

• Deconstruction-

• Delirium-

• Origins-

• Uncanny- Familiar and unfamiliar somehow.

• Monuments-

• Identification- When the reader sees themselves in a character from the book they’re reading.

• Interpellation- Not being free from any biases or constraints. The ways in which we have been interpellated, affect how we understand things and which critical lenses we use, both consciously and unconsciously. When babies are new, they aren’t yet interpellated. They haven’t been affected by the world yet.

• Peritexts- Phrases before the story. 

Here is what I have so far for my Lexicon. There may be some that aren't really supposed to be there, but I'm still not completely sure which ones should and should not be on here. Some of these are lacking a little bit as well. We'll call this a rough draft.

The Self

When I think of the self, I think about what distinguishes one person from another.  We know that our different experiences and “interpellations” cause us to see through different lenses. I think this is where textuality comes in as well. Although I don’t have a complete comprehension of textuality yet, I do know that it deals with the interpretation and word placement in a text.  That is one of the great things about literature. You can see it in a way that makes sense to you and that you can relate to.

That brings me to my next thought. Sometimes, the reader really sees parts of themselves in a character from the book they’re reading. This sort of “identification” allows the reader to appreciate the book more, I think. I can remember being around 18 or 19 years old and reading this book called “confessions of a shopaholic.” I completely felt like I was the character in the book. She was a shopaholic in piles of debt, which is exactly how I was at the time, and to top it all off, her name was Becky. How weird is that? Anyway, those are some of my thoughts on the self.  

Schools of criticism

Reading through the schools of criticism, it was easy to determine which ones I was interested in and which ones I am not. 

The psychoanalytical criticism was one that immediately jumped out at me. Psychology was my major in school when I was working on my associates degree, so anything pertaining to that is always going to win favor with me. I like to know what makes people tick and I like to pull out psychoanalytical information from the literature I read. My goal is to eventually become a counselor, so it's extremely important for me to brush up on my psychology studies from time to time. 

The next one that I really was interested in was the Feminist criticism. I really love reading pieces of literature written by feminist authors. I have so much gratitude and respect for these authors who have helped pave the way for my educational liberties. Recently I have read a couple of pieces by Kate Chopin, and I have thoroughly enjoyed it. She is one of those authors who really contributed a lot in this area.

Lastly, one of the criticisms I was interested in was gender studies and queer theory. We live in a time when gender roles are shifting so much and are becoming so widely accepted, too. It is so interesting to read literature from times when it wasn't appropriate or acceptable for men and women to cross-pollinate their gender roles and to compare that to how it is today. Feminine is no longer looked at as being passive and masculine isn't looked at as being domineering. It is interesting to pick out the subtleties, as well as the clear boundaries of the gender roles from old literature.

I really didn't find any of them to be uninteresting. If I had to choose one that I felt least connected with, I would have to say structuralism and semiotics. All of these were interesting though and it was a good refresher course to go back and read through these.