Still, one also learned how to maintain some distance from all of the theorists, especially those who claimed unique access to truth. The Freudians, as you might surmise, would notice a whole different set of motifs.īecause Austen herself was very interested in capitalism, patriarchy, and psychology-though she wouldn’t have used any of those terms-these varied ways of reading could reveal new aspects to the story. When a feminist reads the same book, she might discover that patriarchal attitudes toward women, who are judged and valued for their marriageability, shape the lives of the characters too. When a Marxist reads Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, for example, he might become interested in the way in which wealth, power, and the determination to have both shapes the lives of all of the characters. ![]() I learned, among other things, that one can read the same text from multiple points of view and therefore see different themes in it. We suffered through a lot of turgid academic writing, but the class had its uses. But we also read Freudians, Marxists, feminists, and others. This was the heyday of deconstructionism-essentially a form of highly pretentious close reading, imported from France-and so we read quite a few texts looking for things that interested deconstructionists. This course-Lit 130, if memory serves-offered prospective scholars a series of frames and theories that could be applied to the reading of books. ![]() ![]() Tucker Carlson, Fox News television host, describing Milleyīack in the 1980s, comparative-literature majors at my university had to take a required course in literary theory.
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