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How to Read Texts
2nd Edition
Also Available from Bloomsbury

Key Terms in Literary Theory, Mary Klages

Literary Theory: A Guide for the Perplexed, Mary Klages
Modern Literary Theory: A Reader, Edited by Patricia Waugh and Philip Rice
Studying English Literature, Edited by Ashley Chantler and David Higgins
Studying Film, Nathan Abrams, Ian Bell and Jan Udris
Studying Literature, Paul Goring, Jeremy Hawthorn and Domhnall Mitchell
Studying the Novel, Jeremy Hawthorn
Studying Plays, Simon Shepherd and Nick Wallis
Studying Poetry, Stephen Matterson and Darryl Jones
 How to
Read Texts
A Student Guide to
Critical Approaches
and Skills
2nd Edition

Neil McCaw
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway

London New York
WC1B 3DP NY 10018
UK USA

www.bloomsbury.com

First published 2008 by Continuum

This Second edition © Neil McCaw, 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or
any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from
the publishers.

Neil McCaw has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988,
to be identified as Author of this work.

No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining

from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury
Academic or the author.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-4411-0818-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN

For the McCaws, past, present and future
 Contents

Preface to the Second Edition xi

Acknowledgements xiii

Introduction: Reading for pleasure and reading

for marks: from childhood to university 1
The developing reader 2
Early schooling 5
Later schooling 6
Pre-degree readers 7
University education 8
Reading and creativity 10
Reading texts? 11
Reading visual texts in practice: Bruegel and Ut 14
The power of reading texts 15

1 What type of reader are you right now? 18

Reading objectively? 18
The inevitability of bias 19
Using bias and preconceptions 21
The undergraduate questionnaire 21
Checkpoint 1 30

2 Reading creatively 32
Why are we talking about creativity in a book about reading? 33
Different types of reader: creative vs. critical? 33
Creativity and criticism 34
Making sense of creativity 38
Creative reading 40
Reading creatively in practice: Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ 44
Checkpoint 2 46

3 Reading texts closely 49

What is close reading? 50
A history of close reading 50
The assumptions of close reading 58
The problems with close reading 58
viii Contents

Creatively exploring close reading 59

Reading closely in practice 1: William Blake, ‘The Tyger’ 60
Reading closely in practice 2: Festival in London (1951) 62
Checkpoint 3 62

4 Reading biography, authors and readers 66

The growing role of the author 67
The limitations of biography 69
Creative exploration: biography and authorship 71
Reading biography in practice: Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre 72
Theories of authorship 75
Reading authorship in practice: Bones 76
Theorizing readers 78
From auteurs to readers: Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy (1972) 82
Checkpoint 4 84

5 Reading genre and literary/cultural history 85

Types of context 85
Genre 86
Using genre 87
Reading generically: just what is literature? (from Plato to the
present day) 88
Reading genre in practice: John Donne, ‘The Extasie’ 96
Literary/cultural history 97
Intertextuality 98
Reading literary/cultural history: the challenge 100
Reading literary/cultural history in practice: Sherlock Holmes and
the Secret Weapon (1943) 101
Literary/cultural history as adaptation 101
Checkpoint 5 102

6 Reading social and political history 105

Reading historical context 106
Using history 108
Reading historically: Marxism 111
Reading historically: the New Historicism 112
Reading historically: Feminist criticism 113
Reading historically: Post-colonial criticism 114
Potential weaknesses of historical readings 115
Potential benefits of historical readings 116
Reading history in practice 1: Eastenders 116
Creative exploration: history and contexts 118
 Contents ix
Reading history in practice 2: Toni Morrison, Beloved 118
Checkpoint 6 120

7 Reading philosophically; or, critical theory 123

The impact of theory 124
Philosophy and critical theory 129
Reading ‘theory’ 130
Philosophical criticism: a way through the maze 130
Reading theory in practice 1: Macbeth adapted (1945) 131
Overcoming the challenges of theory 132
Reading primary theory: Freud, Civilization and its Discontents 132
Reading theory in practice 2: Freud and Shakespeare’s Macbeth 135
Reading applied theory: De Lauretis, ‘Upping the Anti [sic] in
Feminist Theory’ 137
Checkpoint 7 140
Creative exploration: critical theory 140

Conclusions: Reading into writing 144

The undergraduate questionnaire revisited 145
Reading now 145
From reading to writing essays 146
Reading on 151

Notes 153
Bibliography 163
Index 166
 Preface to the Second
Edition of How to Read
Texts

We have probably all experienced many occasions when, on returning to a piece

of writing that we really, REALLY thought was our best work ever we realize that
whilst we have been away some unscrupulous vandal has rewritten all of our
glorious words and made them seem clumsy, awkward, stumbling, perhaps even
barely comprehensible. I have that experience frequently. So, one of the main
delights of being asked to write a revised edition of How to Read Texts has been
the chance to rewrite, correct, improve etc. all those things that I noticed aren’t
quite as I would have liked in the first edition. In particular, I have welcomed
the opportunity to further think through my ideas on reading in light of recent
critical and academic developments and also my own experience of teaching
actual students. Consequently, all of the chapters have been significantly revised
and reorganized, and new sections and chapters have been added to sharpen the
focus. In particular:

●● There is an additional introductory chapter which deals in more detail

with the transition from school-reader to university-reader. This comes
in response to a lot of the feedback I received on the 2008 edition which
said that the focus on transition from school to university was one of the
main ways How to Read Texts stood out from other comparable textbooks
in this area. So I decided that there was more to say on this subject – to
help developing students understand how and why their reading changes
as their education progresses and yet how it is also important to see the
continuities that exist between reading at university level and reading prior
to this.
●● There is a development of the notion of reading as a creative pursuit.
●● The connections between the chapters have been made more explicit. The
second edition shows how each of the different aspects of reading (textual,
contextual, philosophical etc.) relate to each other through the questions we
ask about texts.
●● Although the first edition of How to Read Texts focuses on the reading
of ‘texts’ its focus was on prose, poetry, and drama. This time around the
focus has been expanded in order to look at cultural texts more widely,
namely film, television, photography and painting.
xii Preface to the Second Edition of How to Read Texts

●● There are new sections on ‘genre’, ‘intertextuality’ and ‘adaptation’.

●● The second edition makes links with ‘critical theory’ throughout all the
chapters; further, the individual chapter on ‘theory’ has been fundamentally
reshaped.

Hopefully these various changes amount to improvements that will make the
second edition of How to Read Texts even more of a help to those of you who
want to develop as undergraduate readers in new and exciting ways.

NM January 2013
 Acknowledgements

How to Read Texts would not have been possible without the many students
I have taught over the past 15 years or so; they have kept me on my toes
throughout, for which they have my gratitude.

Never-ending thanks go to Liz Stuart, Mick Jardine and Andrew Melrose for
all their kindness when it was most needed. This book would never have been
finished without their support.

Love to Tracey, Charlie and Alfie, who are always my inspiration.

 Introduction: Reading for
pleasure and reading for
marks: from childhood to
university

Chapter summary
This introductory chapter considers the ways in which an awareness of our reading
development can be part of the process of becoming a sophisticated, imaginative
reader at university level. In particular it illustrates how an appreciation of the
differences between the various stages of reading helps sharpen our understanding
of how to approach ‘texts’ within Higher Education.1

You have been reading for many years; it is something you are comfortable with;
it is something you (hopefully) enjoy. And you are now at university, on a course
that profoundly challenges the way you read and expects you to think about
reading in entirely new ways. Or at least that is how it seems. So, you might
reasonably ask, how does How to Read Texts help? Is it an attempt to show you
how to do something you’ve already been doing perfectly well all by yourself
(thank you very much) for a long time? Well, no, mostly. Despite its title this
book will not tell you how to do something you already know how to do; just
as Arnold Bennett’s How to Live on 24 Hours a Day (1910) isn’t really a book
about the challenges of simply existing. How to Read Texts has been written in
recognition of the fact that how you have read to this point in your education is
relevant to your future development. It does not ask you to start all over again,
to forget what you have learnt to date, but rather to use your current knowledge
and reading skills and a fine-tuned understanding of how your reading has
evolved from its earliest stages, as the basis for how you move forward.
Part of this is about illustrating the links between your reflex reading (the
more commonplace, uninhibited, un-self-conscious type of reading wherein
the only goal is satisfaction and pleasure) and the more target-oriented forms
2 How to Read Texts

of reading that predominate in schools, colleges and universities. Thus, each

chapter of this book is about uncovering, developing and broadening your
reading as a creative, imaginative pursuit; the view that there is ‘a single correct
way to interpret a work of art’2 is sidelined. There is no effort to tell you that
you’ve got it all wrong so far, to point out the error(s) of your ways, but rather
the intention is to show you (through both critical and creative work) that what
you’ve been doing so far is only part of the story. For some students this will be
troubling, at least initially, because it requires a different level of engagement
with texts. Some first-year undergraduate students say that at university ‘reading’
is not enjoyable, that they can no longer just pick up a book, read through and
put it down without thinking about it more deeply: ‘I can’t just read for fun
anymore!’. But these students have yet to realize that ‘reading for pleasure’ has
merit and relevance at university too, it need not be hostile enemies with ‘reading
for marks’; there is something profoundly enjoyable about excavating a text for
all you (as a reader) can find and uncover. As the French critic Roland Barthes
notes, only ‘fools of all kinds … decree foreclosure of the text and of its pleasure’.3
The aim of How to Read Texts is as such to help you harness your reading
pleasure, what D. H. Lawrence rather beautifully calls the ‘tremulations on the
ether’ that ‘make the whole man alive tremble’,4 in an academic context. For this
will enhance your reading practice, drawing as it does on your love for reading
first nurtured during those early days of picture books and stories at bedtime.
And the key to bridging the gap between ‘reading for pleasure’5 and the more
goal-driven and attainment-focused type of reading within the context of
university-level studies is to better understand the nature of your reading devel-
opment up to this point.

The developing reader

From the beginning, a child’s acquisition of basic literacy skills marks an
important step in growing-up; they listen to words brought to life by someone
else, move on to user-friendly ‘read aloud’ books with gloriously-coloured
pictures and pages, and their self-confidence grows as their ability to recognize
words improves. Reading is part of the socialization process and books are part
of an evolving conversation a child has with the world around them. Once in
formal education they progress to more interactive read-aloud texts, scaffolded
reading schemes, and are encouraged to ask questions, give comment, and fill
in the gaps in meaning. Hopefully they will reach the stage when they happily
secrete themselves in the corner of their bedrooms or other welcoming spaces
and lose themselves in the tales of adventure and drama and fun that can be
found in so-called ‘chapter books’, when no adult assistance is required. For
those who come to love reading as a pastime this relationship with books
becomes instinctive and essential.
 Introduction 3
However, although during early childhood reading as a process is largely
subconscious, with readers developing ever better phonological/morphological
dexterity, broader language appreciation (such as vocabulary and syntax) and
improving their understanding of how the context of language affects meaning
without thinking too much about the nature of the changes that are taking
place, once at school things start to change. Pupils might begin in early-years
education experiencing books in familiar ways, with stories read aloud by
teachers, but quickly they are confronted with the fact that their participation
in the reading process is no longer quite as voluntary as it once was; they are
actively and deliberately taught words, and rules, and principles. Although there
are numerous (and at times conflicting) theories and practices of how children
learn to read, within which they develop as writer-readers, read independently
and aloud, utilize multiple cues to derive meaning, and work across genre and
cultural boundaries, reading at this level illustrates a shared assumption across
schools and education systems that as a child’s word recognition/range of vocab-
ulary widens, their comprehension of books and stories and poems and articles
increases and sharpens simultaneously.
As reading skill improves, children are then asked to give increasing amounts
of feedback about what they have read: ‘Did you like the book?’; ‘What did you
like about the poem?’; ‘Who was your favourite character?’; ‘How did it make
you feel?’ And, eventually, as writing skills evolve alongside reading skills this
feedback becomes the basis of exercises such as ‘book reports’ or ‘book reviews’,
both of which are fairly commonplace in schools across much of the world.
Through these exercises children discuss common features such as character
and plot or rhyme and rhythm, as well as their own personal responses to each
text. And as school levels come-and-go the degree of depth and complexity
demanded in such tasks increases; teachers are forced to become less and less
interested in the extent to which pupils can wallow in the sheer fabulous pleasure
of reading (with books a release, a distraction, an ongoing romance) and instead
are increasingly concerned with the extent to which children can comprehend
texts in ways that help them pass tests and examinations.
So, one of the things school teaches us is that reading is not just an end in
itself but a means to something else: information-gathering, establishing facts
and evidence. Hence the reader’s quest becomes one not for enjoyment but for
understanding, reading in order to achieve. This is a less dynamic, participatory,
creative, and pleasurable activity for many, no longer what Sigmund Freud calls
‘fantasying’, the ‘fulfilment of a wish, a correction of unsatisfying reality’.6 At
school it is increasingly not the process but the outcome that is the main concern,
not so much (as the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) puts it) reading to ‘guess…
make out … tell by conjecture … foresee, foretell, predict’, but instead reading to
become more precise in the understanding of what is being represented. Readers
are not active players in the construction of meaning but rather individuals
accessing a world of knowledge.
4 How to Read Texts

It is self-evident that people of all social groups should be equipped with the
skills and abilities necessary to participate in the world around them. However,
the increasing focus on reading as a function rather than as a pastime of delight
and wonder and exploration has regrettable consequences. In moving away from
‘reading for pleasure’ towards ‘reading for marks’, education systems embody the
idea that, in the words of Terry Eagleton, ‘seriousness is one thing and pleasure
another’.7 The joy and delight of exploring words, images and texts are demoted
in the name of ‘finding things out’, ‘making an argument’ and ‘passing the test’,
and in engaging in these activities children are less likely to continue to read with
the freedom and abandon with which they dived into books when they were
younger. Rather than enjoying the activity on its own merits, school-readers
become increasingly driven by a supposed need to say the right thing about
texts, to know what the ‘important’ elements are, and to use the correct terms
and vocabulary. And by the time these readers reach university level this shift has
become profound, to the extent that it can often seem to students as if reading has
almost nothing in common with the activity they engaged in as a child.
There is a whole market of books available that tries to help readers negotiate the
transition to ever-deeper levels of academic reading. How to Read Texts is just one
example of such that focuses specifically on university-level studies. In their own
way each ‘how to’ book discusses, examines, and analyses the processes of reading
and offers what it hopes to be useful advice and tips to help students through
the maze of approaches and skills. But the problem with many of the books that
consider undergraduate reading in particular is that they imply that the reading
skills that students have acquired previously are no longer relevant. There is a strong
sense of starting all over again, of a chasm between the reading students have been
doing and the sort of reading that is now required at a more advanced level of
academic study. At university, it would seem, everything is different.
Obviously in some ways things are different; How to Read Texts bears this
out. However, although it would be wrong to say that university students do not
have to read differently at all, or to understand their reading practice in any new
light, it is vital they do not lose sight of their previous practices and assump-
tions. Readers must not (in the words of a hackneyed old phrase) ‘throw the
baby out with the bathwater’. Sure, it is necessary to develop additional methods
and skills, but this should not mean denying or rejecting all that has been learnt
and enjoyed so far. In particular, it is important to remember that reading can
be enjoyable, pleasurable, and fundamentally creative, whilst also being a means
to an end (critical commentaries, essays, dissertations etc.). There are ways of
thinking about texts of all kinds that are perceptive, academic, and imaginative.
The best readers do not just have an ability to utilize relevant methodologies,
or apply buzzwords and terminologies, they are also inventive and insightful;
and this usually means that the pleasure they derive from reading is part of the
process.
Consequently, each stage of this book will encourage you to think about
 Introduction 5
yourself in relation to the particular texts and issues discussed. This chapter, for
instance, will look at how your academic reading has evolved and been defined
through assessment from early schooling through to university; Chapter 1 will
examine your own presumptions and assumptions about reading and texts
and where these have come from; and each subsequent chapter will illustrate,
through a range of critical and creative exercises and tasks, how your own
thoughts and ideas and reading practices relate to those of other readers/critics.

Early schooling
‘Reading’ is taught using a variety of methods across the world; however,
‘success’ in reading is more often than not viewed in relation to proficiency at
growing levels of textual comprehension, a matter of information recall facili-
tated by close textual reading: ‘understanding, using and reflecting on written
texts … in order to achieve one’s goals and potential and to participate in
society’.8 This focus on increasing levels of comprehension is especially evident
in countries with a framework for nationwide reading tests, such as the UK9 and
the US,10 wherein the functional ability to interpret writing of different kinds is
the concern from the earliest years of primary/elementary education:

– ‘what did Billy ask Dad?’11

– ‘what did Oscar’s Mum do to help him?’12
– ‘what do these paragraphs help show about Daisy?’13

These requests for textual recall fall into the category of what I call the ‘what?’
questions; such questions do not always and necessarily begin with ‘what?’
(‘Describe …’ / ‘Is there …?’ / ‘Which …?’ and ‘Explain …’ are common alterna-
tives), but in all cases they are united by a focus on the basic features of each text:

– ‘what is the name of the cave?’14

– ‘what does the sentence imply?’15

The ‘what?’ category of questions is concerned with:

– what is happening?
– what is being said/shown?
– what language means
– what the text is about?
– what sort of text it is

In answering such questions readers are required to comprehend each particular

text in a literal sense as well as to make inferences about meaning. Attention
6 How to Read Texts

is thus paid to major thematic areas of interest, plot, characterization, setting,

form, or subject matter.

Later schooling
As young people progress into secondary education (middle or junior high
school in the US) they are still expected to deal with the ‘what?’ category of
question, to comprehend matters of characterization, setting, form and plot
etc., but the sophistication required in their answers grows, especially in terms
of the extent to which the implications of language become a key concern.
Readers will increasingly be asked to infer what is not explicitly stated with a
more sustained consideration of the associations, hints, suggestions and nuances
of the language, and they will be confronted with more challenging ‘what?’
questions that demand greater detail and complexity:

– what is the historical context?

– what ideas are apparent?
– what meanings are evident?

So, for instance, an effective reading of Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’
(1963) speech would need to show an awareness of its historical background,
the American Civil Rights movement, just as a successful interpretation of Willy
Russell’s play Educating Rita (1980) should mention the fact that the play was
written/performed during the period when the UK elected its first ever female
Prime Minister.
These growing expectations of students are apparent in the examinations
they sit as part of their secondary-level schooling. Questions often come in
familiar formats but ever more intricacy of interpretation is expected:

– ‘What are the boy’s thoughts and feelings in these lines?’16

– ‘What evidence is there that …?’17
– ‘Which of the following best describes what happens …?’18

In answering such questions students are supposed to demonstrate sensitive

text-based close reading skills and a growing interest in the specifics of how
texts function:

– ‘What is the main strategy the author uses in the story?’19

– ‘Show how both of these aspects of his character are conveyed to the
reader’20
– ‘How does the writer present feelings …?’21
 Introduction 7
The ‘how?’ category of questions is that which looks at the means through which
texts achieve their effects. This often places particular emphasis on language
and language devices and how they operate, but more broadly the focus is on
the nature of representation. When answering ‘how?’ questions readers can talk
about vocabulary, symbolism, imagery, metaphor, figurative devices, diction,
tone etc., as they advance from thinking about ‘what?’ is happening to a more
subtle, detailed examination of the ways in which this comes about through
the text as a medium. Thus reading texts becomes a matter of decoding and
deciphering them as forms of communication.

Thinking about … the ‘what?’ and the ‘how?’

What different skills are required by ‘what?’ and ‘how?’ questions?

Pre-degree readers
Later secondary and pre-university education22 is characterized by the study of
texts through ever-more sophisticated forms of ‘how?’ questioning:

– ‘How does the critic’s description apply …?’23

– ‘Compare how information and attitudes about spiders are conveyed by the
speakers in the two texts.’24
– ‘Show how the writer’s mood of disillusionment is conveyed …’25

These questions embody a primary focus on language, form, point-of-view, and

structure etc. Sometimes the ‘how?’ question is not overtly stated, such as if
students were asked to ‘Consider the ways in which the language conveys the
central message of the text’ or ‘To what extent does the text use symbolism?’, but
nevertheless the primary concern is still with ‘how’ the text operates. And even
where the question seems to invite an individual reader’s reaction to the set text
(in the form of an essay or piece of creative writing) what is really being assessed
is how the reader responds to how the text functions and answers are supposed
to demonstrate a sophisticated appreciation of its nuances:

– ‘ “Dr Faustus’s desire to be superhuman leads him to be inhuman.” To what

extent do you agree with this view?’26
– ‘Imagine that Catherine Earnshaw (Wuthering Heights) writes a letter to
Nelly during the five weeks she stays at Thrushcross Grange. Write this
letter, in which she reveals her thoughts about the Lintons and life at
Thrushcross Grange.’27
8 How to Read Texts

University education
By the time students begin undergraduate university courses in subjects such as
English, the ‘what?’ and ‘how?’ stages of reading are taken for granted as part
of a wider, broader, deeper investigation of every text. From now on the focus
will be on ‘why?’:

The ‘why?’ category of questions looks beyond the ‘what?’ and the ‘how?’ of a
text whilst drawing on both:

– ‘why has the author chosen to represent their subject matter in such a way?’
– ‘why are particular images and symbols used?’
– ‘why does the text use certain forms of language?’

These are about trying to establish an overarching interpretation of each

text, thinking about ‘why?’ its surface features and underlying meanings are
significant in light of a wide variety of ideological, cultural, historical and
philosophical contexts. So, for instance, exam questions at earlier levels of study
(detailed above) would come in difference forms:

– ‘Compare how information and attitudes about spiders are conveyed by the
speakers in the two texts’

would at university look something more like:

– ‘Why is the representation of spiders in the two focus texts significant?’

shifting away from a closer reading of how spiders are represented to a consid-
eration of the cultural relevance and importance of this representation.
Similarly:

– ‘Show how the writer’s mood of disillusionment is conveyed …’

would become something closer to

– ‘Why is the mood of disillusionment significant in terms of what the text

says about its historical era?’

This demands an inquiry into the way in which the perceived ‘mood’ can be
interpreted in relation to broader cultural features/factors, requiring wider
contextual research.
In some instances the ‘why?’ question is not explicitly stated, but it is there
nevertheless; this is the case with (for example) the ‘Discuss’ type of question:
 Introduction 9
– ‘ “Dr Faustus is a play that questions Elizabethan ideas of humanity.”
Discuss.’

This sort of discursive question requires the student to move systematically

through all three stages of reading, from the ‘what?’ (… is going on in the text?
… is being described? are the main themes of the play? etc.) to the ‘how?’ (… are
these represented?…characterized? … conjured up? etc.) to the by now centrally
important ‘why?’ (… does the play depict its key themes in such a fashion?
… is this representation significant? … are these issues relevant?) And it is the
latter ‘why?’ stage that most characterizes university-level work, interpreting
the significance of each text against the backdrop of an ever-increasing amount
(hopefully!) of historical, cultural, social, political, literary, biographical and
philosophical knowledge.

Thinking about … ‘why?’ questions

‘Why?’ questions can be formulated in different ways: ‘To what extent …?’ /
‘How far …?’ / Examine …’ / Analyse …’ etc. Write TEN essay questions of your
own that do not actually feature the word ‘why?’ at all but which still retain a
central focus on the wider meaning and/or significance of the text. To get you
started here’s one of my own: ‘To what extent is the text radical?’

It is important to acknowledge that the distinction between the

‘what?’/‘how?’/‘why?’ categories of question is not always so clear-cut. Whilst
it is true to say that each category predominates at different stages of study, it is
also important to recognize that:

(a) skills grow incrementally; when readers move on to the next level of
questioning they do not entirely leave the previous one behind;
(b) reading texts can involve oscillating back and forth between
‘what?’/‘how?’/‘why?’ questions;
(c) when reading some forms of text readers might need to work on the
‘what?’/‘how?’ elements simultaneously – where the only way to
adequately come to terms with ‘what?’ certain texts are about is to
consider ‘how?’ their effect is created.

Furthermore, in some instances students engage with questions about ‘why?’ a

text is significant prior to university level, even if this tends to be the exception
rather than the rule. There are even implied forms of ‘why?’ questioning in some
secondary-school level work:

– Examine two ways the extract fits the genre of lifestyle magazines.28
10 How to Read Texts

– Discuss how people and lifestyles are represented in the extract. Refer to
stereotypes in your answer.29

Here texts are being viewed in relation to both their genre and also the ways they
relate to how society more broadly thinks about identity. Just as in some post-
secondary examinations where a wider dimension is also evident:

– Consider whether media portrayals are more complex than simple positive
or negative representations.
– How does the representation of the group or place you have studied differ
across different media platforms or genres? Why do you think this is the
case?30

Nevertheless, in all of these cases the ‘why?’ element of the question tends to
be restricted, considering the ‘message’ of each text (‘why is the subject matter
represented in this particular fashion?’) in a relatively limited fashion rather
than touching on broader issues to do with authors/readers/culture/history/
philosophy etc. It is only really at undergraduate level that the latter considera-
tions come into play consistently, with ‘why?’ questions becoming a more taxing
matter of textual excavation and exploration.

Reading and creativity

This broadening scope of ‘reading’ at university-level should be exciting and
dynamic; it should lead to creative reading, with fresh, incisive perspectives on
texts of all kinds, an activity releasing the same energies as (for instance) writing
a poem, moulding a piece of clay, or figuring out a particular chord pattern on a
guitar. The text should become, in Barthes’s words, ‘that space where no language
has a hold over any other, where languages circulate [my italics]’.31 However,
even though many students will come to university having previously engaged
in creative-writing exercises as part of their textual studies in subjects such as
English,32 many institutions have been slow to adequately acknowledge that the
process of developing as a reader has a crucial creative dimension. Indeed, and
rather curiously, the link between creativity and criticality in (most) UK university
courses is at times barely visible. Opportunities to use creative practice (i.e. writing)
within English, Film Studies, or Media Studies syllabuses, for instance, are patchy.
Most of the time if students wish to write creatively then they have to study for a
Creative Writing degree, whereas if they want to write critically then they study for
an English degree, or a Film degree, or a Media degree etc. All of which upholds the
traditional binary opposition between what is creative and what is critical.
How to Read Texts will not uphold such a traditional opposition. It attempts
to combine creative and critical work in the development of reading skills, and
 Introduction 11
to show how the two help and inform each other. This is not to appear radical,
or faddish, but is rather because our literary and cultural history shows us that
many of our most influential critics and writers have always thought that this is
how things work best. The poet W. B. Yeats, for instance, saw the creative/critical
relationship as crucial: ‘almost certainly no great art … has arisen without a great
criticism, for its herald or its interpreter and protector. … All writers, all artists
of any kind … have had some philosophy, some criticism of their art.’33 Just as
the writer and critic T. S. Eliot was convinced that ‘probably, indeed, the larger
part of the labour of an author in composing his work is critical labour.’34
So, creativity and criticism are not oppositional, rather they are comple-
mentary, significantly and necessarily so. It might even be argued that creative
practice is not possible at all without a strong critical sense (or how else would
we know what worked and what did not, what was original and was not,
and how we might improve?); further, the best forms of criticism, the most
dynamic and most groundbreaking examples of interpretation, always emerge
from a creative spirit, powered by creative energy as readers/critics unpick and
unravel texts in new ways. For just one example of this truth, the (metaphorical)
explosion of what has come to be known as critical theory in the 1980s/90s, in
which a wide variety of new, philosophical modes of criticism reacted against a
perceived ‘old guard’ of critical practice, was just such a movement of creative
energy and spirit, as the approaches and wisdoms of the past were challenged,
undermined, and rejected.

Reading texts?
So far in this chapter the term ‘text’ has been used liberally. This has not been
accidental. In fact, it is central to the overarching philosophy of How to Read
Texts as a whole, because ‘text’ (as opposed to terms such as ‘literature’) is
not a value judgement, an indication of supposed quality or ‘art’, and it avoids
relegating some works into a category of lesser quality. The subject of English
has since its development in schools and universities been dogged by such elitist
ideas of ‘literature’ and ‘the literary’, and at different points in time these have
served as ways of categorizing what should be studied, linking a measurement
of artistic value with one of moral and political propriety. And so the use of the
term ‘text’ in How to Read Texts deliberately reacts against such, focusing on a
wider variety of material than simply the classics, the so-called ‘greats’ of literary
history, and instead examining ways of interpreting a range of cultural texts; not
only written works (novels, poems, plays and non-fictional prose), but also film,
television, visual art and photography.
For some readers the focus on visual and non-visual material will be difficult
at first; it will mean being asked to analyse non-written texts in an academic
fashion for the very first time. Traditionally, schools have not focused on any
12 How to Read Texts

kind of systematic study of visual material, what is known as visual literacy,

even though for many of us our very first experience of ‘reading’ comes within
the context of books with pictures. But what soon happens is that as our reading
skill increases we progress to books with no pictures at all, and although children
might at school be asked (sporadically) to voice their own thoughts and feelings
about (say) an image, or a film, they are never adequately equipped with the
tools necessary to ‘read’ visual material in a coherent, organized fashion. In the
UK, for instance, coherent methods and strategies for reading visual material
only appear within specific examined subjects, such as Film Studies,35 Media
Studies,36 Art and Design, Applied Art and Design and Art History.37
The peculiar thing about this is that the nature of contemporary culture is less
and less paper/book-based and more and more rooted in multimedia, meaning
that ‘literacy’ can no longer be just a matter of reading conventional books full of
words. We live in a world of multidimensional texts, texts not just with pictures
but also with links to the internet, to moving images, and with soundtracks
as well; there is an incredible variety of material (visual, visual-textual, aural-
textual etc.) out there that people are ‘reading’ on a daily basis, drawing on many
of the same skills they learnt when reading written texts for the first time. Formal
educational systems might still use printed ‘books’ as the primary (at times sole)
means through which children read, but in truth the world outside is changing
with each passing second and readers are changing with it.
So, in order to bridge the gap between reading written texts and reading visual
ones, How to Read Texts will deploy the same method (the ‘what?’/‘how?’/‘why?’
stages of interpretation) for all forms of text, asking the same questions of each:

– what does the text *(painting/photograph/sculpture/advertisement etc.)*

seem to be about? what appears to be happening in the text? what is going
on here?
– how does the text *(painting/photograph/sculpture/advertisement etc.)*
use particular techniques or strategies to represent its subject matter?
how are the events/features of the text depicted? how does the language/
grammar of the text operate?
– why is the subject matter of the text *(painting/photograph/sculpture/
advertisement etc.)* depicted in such a way? why are the events of the text
significant? why is the central message of the text important?

The fact that (say) film is not the same as sculpture, or prose fiction is not the
same as painting, or poetry is not photography, need not inhibit reading them
in a comparable fashion. Just as long as the individual features of each particular
type of text are also acknowledged as part of the process:

Prose can be fiction or non-fiction, or a hybrid of both. Whichever form it takes

(article, essay, novel etc.) readers might talk about narrative structure or point-
 Introduction 13
of-view, tone, diction, vocabulary, symbolism, archetypes, setting, dialogue,
imagery, tense, characterization, grammar, plot, story, allegory, etc.

Poetry comes in a number of different shapes and sizes (villanelle, limerick,

haiku etc.), and readers can talk in terms of features such as subject, sound, form,
rhythm, rhyme, imagery, mood, figurative language, alliteration, assonance,
allusion, caesura, enjambment, metre, metonymy, simile, metaphor, stanza,
stress etc.

Television is read both as an institution (broadcasting, distribution, regulation)

as well as for its individual programmes, which are themselves interpreted for
their style, atmosphere, use of sound/music, pacing, camerawork, lighting,
editing, graphics, setting, casting, costume, make-up, dialogue, action etc.

Film is considered for its ‘studios,’ genres, auteurs, editing, shots, soundtrack,
lighting, angle, cuts, focus, gaze, dialogue, themes, tropes, symbolism, message,
subtext, narrative, story, plot, motif, characterization, framing, montage, point-
of-view, scene, take, voice-over, zoom, setting, costume, tracking, tone etc.

Visual art is examined for symbols, materials, formal elements, organizing

principles, dimensionality, method of display, interaction with space, viewpoint,
composition, brushwork, perspective, colouring etc.

Photography is read for content, shape, texture, objective, subject, theme,

focus, light, line, space, value, angle, background, focus, composition, contour,
contrast, framing, vantage point, technologies etc.

Thinking about … new vocabularies

Using the OED (or any other suitably-detailed dictionary of your choice) look
up the meaning of any of the terms listed above that you are unfamiliar with.
Think about how each of these unfamiliar terms might be used when talking
about particular texts.

In How to Read Texts the reading of written texts is thus the foundation for
reading an array of material, with a common approach featuring across the
following chapters. Form-specific terminology (such as referring to ‘camer-
awork’ when talking about film or television) is only used when it is seen as vital
in talking about the specifics of ‘how?’ particular texts work. Notwithstanding
such instances, the key focus will be on the numerous areas of overlap between
texts as texts, whether they consist of words, combine words and images, or
else are images alone. With this in mind, this chapter will conclude by working
14 How to Read Texts

through the familiar ‘what?’/’how?’ questions in relation to Peter Bruegel’s

painting Children’s Games (1560)38 and Nick Ut’s famous Kim Phuc photograph
(1972),39 as the basis for your own examination of ‘why?’ the two visual texts
might be significant.

Reading visual texts in practice:

Bruegel and Ut
‘What?’
Bruegel’s painting features a busy scene with the inhabitants of a town frolicking
outdoors. They are involved in a wide array of games, on their own, with a friend,
or others involving large groups. The community seems to be harmoniously
enjoying itself, with no signs of economic hardship, a need to work, or of concerns
beyond pleasure and enjoyment. It all has the feel of something like a street party
or carnival, with all worries and anxieties banished for the day and the only
objective being merriment. The title of the painting, Children’s Games, appears
slightly misleading in this sense because the scene involves both adults and
children, which might suggest that it is making a particular (more subtle) point.
Nick Ut’s photograph details a scene of hysterical, wounded children fleeing
from what looks like a warzone and a very recent explosion behind them –
there is a curtain of smoke across the entire backdrop of the picture. Five Asian
children are flanked by the soldiers of an unidentified army. The children’s
faces illustrate fear (especially the boy on the left-hand-side) and pain, particu-
larly on the face of the naked girl towards the centre of the picture. The two
smaller children seem bewildered, looking around them with confusion. Their
movement towards the camera contrasts with the apparent inaction/disinterest
of the soldiers to the rear.

‘How?’
Children’s Games uses vivid colour (there is a repeated use of a striking aquamarine
in the clothing and this matches the tone of the river top-left) and precise
brushwork in the outline of each character so as to distinguish each person/
group. At the same time the palette used for the picture mixes pastel and earthy
shades, and this feels both calming and homely at the same time. The painting
has a three-dimensional quality that allows a viewpoint that is above the action
and can therefore see all of the locals involved in their ‘games’; this would not be
possible if the painting was ‘flat’ (two-dimensional). The perspective creates the
impression of space, which is crucial to the scene of people enjoying themselves
freely without being uncomfortably compressed together. The characters have
been carefully arranged to ensure that, even when they are intermingled, there is
no loss of their individual identities. Further, most people are painted dynami-
 Introduction 15
cally, as if in the course of action – even the figure peering out of the upper-floor
window (mid-left) seems to be doing something.
The black-and-white nature of the Kim Phuc photograph somehow accen-
tuates the drama of the scene – it makes the events seem more detached which,
because of the subject matter, is more horrifying, and it also exaggerates the
contrast between shades; the white of three of the children’s shirts stands out
prominently, and this in turn (by implication) draws attention to the unclothed
girl centre stage. This shading of identities continues with the dull, grey-looking
soldiers. But what is perhaps most effective (in dramatic terms) is the compo-
sition (the string of children across the image, each with their own distinct
identity) and the perspective the photographer achieves – it is almost as if the
viewer is participating in the action, with the children running directly towards
them for assistance. There is no eye-line that can avoid the scene, such is the
vantage point of the observer and the angle from which the photograph is taken.
The action is coming towards the camera which, with the enveloping smoke to
the rear of the scene, leaves the viewer with no escape.

Thinking about … the ‘why?’ of visual texts

Drawing on the ‘what?’/’how?’ reading of Bruegel and Ut (above), think about
‘why?’ both texts might be significant?

The power of reading texts

If we see ‘reading’ as a fundamentally creative examination of texts of all kinds
then readers themselves become enormously significant in the process of
deciphering and defining meaning, bringing into play what the critic Wolfgang
Iser calls their ‘kaleidoscope of perspectives, preintentions, [and] recollections’.40
Reading (and the reader’s role within it) can be pleasurable and fun and exciting,
but also (paradoxically) weighty and important. It’s not that you can no longer
flick absent-mindedly through the pages of the latest blockbuster while you lie
on the beach trying to cultivate a suntan, or sit perched awkwardly on the edge
of a chair in the doctor’s surgery. But you should understand that as you do so,
indeed when you come to look at a text for whatever motivation and within
whatever context, you are engaged in an extraordinary process. For readers
have the power not just to understand but to create meaning; to be active, not
passive. They can view things anew, shed fresh light on old material, notice
intricate, previously-unnoticed connections between images and ideas; these
are all within their remit. There is the wonderful possibility of the ‘fulfilment of
the potential, unexpressed reality of the text’.41 Which means that just as there
was excitement and joy when, all those years ago, you were first able to decipher
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