LOOKING BEYOND THE TEXT OR AT THE TEXT

1. INTRODUCTION

Learning Outcomes: 

 Understand and appreciate literary texts in various genres across rational literature 

 Demonstrate understanding and appreciation of 21st Century literature of the

world through: 

1. A written close analysis and critical interpretation of a literary text in terms of forms
and theme, with a description of its context derived from research. 

2. A critical paper that analyzes literary text in relation to the contexts of the reader and
the writer or a critical paper that interprets literary text using any of the critical
approaches. 

3. An adaptation of a text into other creative forms.

LOOKING BEYOND THE TEXT OR AT THE TEXT 

A. Further Discussion of New Historicism and “Death of the Author" 

           Have you ever read a literary piece, and afterward, you were more interested in
the author's history than the story itself? Or maybe you believed that for you to
understand the text,you needed to know the author's history? 

            You have discussed the academic theory of new historicism before, but have
you ever applied it in a text? The idea of historical criticism is a reiteration that for you to
understand any given literary text, you need to understand first who the author is, his or
her social background, the concepts that were established during his or her time, and
the milieu he or she lived in back then. The idea is that before or after you appreciate a
literary text, you need to be familiar with who the author is and the world he or she lives
in back when the text was written. 

            Furthermore, new historicists seek to find the political function of literature back
at when it was written and try to find the ways on how cultures produce and reproduce
themselves. They try to reveal the historical truth and authority in a text so as to find the
prevailing ideas and assumptions of its historical time. Hence, history moves beyond
just being mere data or chronicles of time, facts, and events; history becomes a
complicated catalog of the human being's reality and ideas. Literature written in a
particular time may reveal its social organization, taboos, prejudices, problems,
practices, and so much more. It also seeks to discover how these ideas have evolved
as the literary text itself changes. 

           If you were to apply this theory to the selection that you have just read (the
excerpt from Banyaga: A Song of War), what does it reveal about the plight of the
Filipino-Chinese back before the Americans came to the Philippines?        

            Another theory that counteracts new historicism is from an essay by French

philosopher Roland Barthes entitled “The Death of the Author.” Here, Barthes
argues against looking at the author's identity and the context in which the author lived
in to understand the author's literary text. He says that if you allow the author to
intervene in the text or if you give the text an author, the view and interpretation may be
limited. 

             He further states that the readers must separate the literary text from its writer
so that the text itself may be liberated from the tyranny that the author's context may
impose on the selection. Every literary selection has multiple layers of meaning; thus,
these meanings must be allowed to flow and be interpreted on their own, without the
author's background or history. 

             Read the next excerpt from a contemporary novel by Afghan-American writer

Khaled Hosseini. Khaled Hosseini is an Afghan-born American writer who is also a
professional medical doctor in California. He left Kabul, Afghanistan when he was 11
years old and has only since returned when he was 38, where he felt like a stranger to
his own country. Out of his experiences, he has written three best-selling novels: The
Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and And the Mountains Echoed. All of his
novels have featured Afghan protagonists and characters. He has since retired from
medicine to write full time. 

             Khaled Hosseini is an Afghan-born American writer who is also a professional

medical doctor in California. He left Kabul, Afghanistan when he was 11 years old and
has only since returned when he was 38, where he felt like a stranger to his own
country. Out of his experiences, he has written three best-selling novels: The Kite
Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and And the Mountains Echoed. All of his novels
have featured Afghan protagonists and characters. He has since retired from medicine
to write full time.