Asking Questions of Texts

AUTHOR-CENTERED QUESTIONS

1. How do the author's life and identity influence the work of writing? How are any of the following involved?

  • Family & homelife
  • Political Involvement
  • Romances
  • Major life changes
  • Travels
  • Work & employment
  • Economic background
  • Friendships
  • Nationality
  • Lifestyle
  • Ethnicity
  • Gender
  • Education
  • Religious belief
  • Traumatic experiences
  • Role models

2. How do the author's skills influence the making of a text?

  • How much does the author rely on intuition in creating her work?
  • How emotionally involved is the writer with his work?
  • How personal and/or autobiographical is the author's material?
  • Do the author's working methods shape the final product in any way?
  • Does the writer keep journals or notebooks?
  • Does he work quickly? Methodically? Spontaneously?
  • How much revision and editing takes place?
  • What kinds of resources does the author have at her disposal?
  • Do any particular interests of the author's influence what he writes?
  • Is the writer better at certain kinds of writing?
  • Is the author seeking to emulate other authors, works, styles?
  • Does the author have a particular audience or audiences in mind?

3. How does the author seek to influence the reader's responses? (adapted from Leland Ryken, Windows to the World)

  • How does the author control what the reader sees and doesn't see?
  • Are alternatives offered within the work?
  • Does the author make evaluative descriptions of characters, scenes, or events?
  • Are any motifs repeated to stress an idea?
  • Are any aspects of the work highlighted through exaggeration?
  • Are any details stressed by omitting others?
  • Are any elements foregrounded while others are caused to recede?
  • Does the author choose a particular context to make a point?
  • Does the ending of the work influence its meaning?
  • Does the author make any direct statements as to the work's meaning?

TEXT-CENTERED QUESTIONS

4. How does the narrative create meaning in the text itself?

  • Who are the main characters? Do they change in any way? How are they related to one another?
  • In what way are the events of the story structured?
  • Is there a surprise twist in the plot?
  • Are the events foreshadowed?
  • Does the story contain flashbacks?
  • Is there a central conflict?
  • Is the story ironic in any way?
  • Is it comic? Tragic? A mixture of the two?
  • What is the setting (the time and place) of the story?
  • Is the atmosphere of the story important?
  • Is the narrator realistic? Impressionistic? Magical? Fantastic? Surreal?
  • What kind of narrator tells the story?
  • Does the title relate to the meaning of the story?
  • What is the theme of the story?
  • How does style shape the meaning of the story?

5. How does the language itself influence the meaning of the text?

  • Can you paraphrase the text's meaning?
  • What is the tone of the language?
  • Do the words have any important connotations?
  • What kinds of images are important?
  • Do certain sensory elements (sight, sound, touch, smell, etc.) predominate?
  • Are colors used in particular ways?
  • Are any figures of speech used?
  • Do any symbols or allegories exist?
  • What kinds of sentences does the work favor?
  • How important are sound effects? Metrics? Rhyme? Rhythm?
  • Does the text contradict in any way?
  • Are there disruptions where it is impossible to decide what is meant?

6. How does the genre or performance expectations of a work shape its meaning?

  • What kind of work is the text? How does this shape the form it takes?
  • What intended purpose of the work? How does this influence its structure or language?
  • How is the work to be performed?
  • Is it to be read silently? Sung?
  • Does it need theatrical devices? Lights? Music? Costumes? Props?
  • Is the time or place in which it is read seem important to its meaning?
  • How is the audience expected to interact with the text?
  • Can it be changed in any way and still be the same work?

7. How does the text's argument establish itself?

  • How would you classify the purpose of the text?
  • What is the goal of the text? Is it primarily concerned with knowledge? (e.g. philosophy, theology, history, mathematics, etc.)
  • Is it more concerned with practical outcomes? (e.g. political policy changes, social changes)
  • If theoretical or practical, is it concerned with empirical study? (e.g. biology, chemistry, etc.)
  • Can you interpret and define the author’s key terms?
  • Can you locate the author’s leading propositions?
  • What kinds of support (proof) are being offered for each claim?
    • Deduction or argument from principle applied to specific cases
    • Definition, esp. stipulative definitions established by the author
    • Cause-effect relationships
    • Symptomatic signs
    • Induction from representative cases
    • Analogy -- historical, literal, or figurative
    • Authority deriving from ethical, political, expert, or religious claims
    • Emotional appeals to an audience's motivations
    • Emotional appeals to an audience's character or values
  • Are the warrants (assumptions behind an argument) for such supports explicitly stated or implicitly assumed? If they are, do you find them convincing?
  • Does the author provide any additional backing to make the warrant more acceptable to her audience?
  • If the text does not provide a warrant or backing, would it help clarify the argument to speculate as to what it is?
  • Does the author qualify the case?
  • How much does the text acknowledge that its claims are built on the presence or absence of such qualifications? Do you agree?
  • Could the text still make its argument without these exceptions?
  • Does the author acknowledge, accommodate, or refute other counterarguments?
  • Are these in any way essential to the arguments being made? If they are, do you find them convincing?
  • Is the author uninformed or misinformed about the facts of the matter?
  • Is the argument illogical? If so, what contradictions are present?
  • Is the argument incomplete in its analysis? If so, what important steps are left out? What else would be needed to actually make the claim that the author makes?
  • Are the claims based on authority unjustified? If so, why?
  • Is the author mistaken about either the validity or nature of the authority in question?
  • Are the appeals uninformed or misinformed about the nature of the audience?
  • Do they contradict each other in any way?
  • Do the appeals overlook other equally important appeals?

READER-CENTERED QUESTIONS

8. How do readers' experiences shape their responses to a work?

  • What kinds of emotions do you feel as a reader? Why do you feel this way?
  • How do you imagine certain scenes, characters, events, or images?
  • What kinds of details do you add to help yourself picture a thing?
  • Do you identify with any aspect of the work? Does it reveal something about yourself?
  • Are you alienated from the experience of reading in any way?
  • Do you find some aspects of the work difficult? Disturbing? Contradictory? Boring? Why is this the case?

9. How do readers' worldviews shape their reading?

  • Do you agree or disagree strongly with any aspect of the literature?
  • Does your view of the nature of God influence the way you interpret the work's meaning?
    • The nature of humans?
    • The nature of good and evil, virtue or sin?
    • The purpose of life?
    • The structure of knowledge?
    • The practice of family? Politics? Education? Medicine? Law?
    • The ecological makeup of the Earth?
    • The unfolding of the future?
    • The nature of the past? Traditions? History?
  • How do you view the purpose and function of literature? Does this influence the way you read the work?

CONTEXT-CENTERED QUESTIONS

10.  How do various contexts shape the process of making, interpreting, and experiencing literature?

  • In what way is the process a religious one?
  • Is this act of reading one of worship?
  • Is it intended for meditation? Ethical training? Catechism? Apologetics?
  • Does it challenge or question accepted beliefs in any way?
  • Is it intended for self-examination? Discernment?
  • How do politics shape the creation, distribution, or reading of literature?
  • Are certain works censored?
  • Are some state-sponsored?
  • Are certain interpretations more acceptable to those in power?
  • How do economic forces shape the process?
  • How much does it cost to produce the work? To distribute and market it? Who can afford it? Who can't? Why?
  • Do differing ethnic or national experiences shape the way it is read?
  • What institutions control the publication of literary works?
  • Which ones control the interpretation/ criticism of such works?
  • Which ones also control the teaching of them?
  • What traditions lay behind the process of literature?
  • What interpretive communities influence the way we read?
  • Are authors, publishers, or readers trying to solve certain issues or generating problems?
  • Do certain cultural practices influence any of the above?

11. In what ways ethically can we evaluate and judge the process of literature? (in part adapted from Wayne Booth, The Company We Keep)

  • What are the author's responsibilities?
  • To the reader?
  • To the work itself?
  • To himself as a person? As a writer?
  • To those lives used as "material"?
  • To society in general, to the future?
  • How well does the author accomplish what she set out to do?
  • Was the work true to life? Were the actions, characters, and scenes believable?
  • Was the style successful? On what terms?
  • What changes would improve the work?
  • What are the reader's responsibilities?
    • To the author?
    • To the work itself?
    • To yourself?
    • To other readers?
  • Was the work worth your time and attention? Did it capture and hold your interest? Why or why not?
  • What defects(if any) in yourself caused this to happen?
  • How did the text compare with similar works?
  • Do you agree or disagree with what others have said about the work?
  • Would you encourage others to read the work?
  • What have you learned from reading the work?
  • Could it make your life different or better in any way?
  • Should you do anything about the issues that the work raises?

12. How is the act of literature related to the nature of God?

  • In what ways does the search for form, unity, variety, and balance derive from and reflect on God's essential triune nature?
  • How does the literary act reflect essential unities or disunities in God's creation?
  • What does the divine-human nature of Jesus reveal about the balance of the spiritual and material realms in literature?
  • What does the nature of the Holy Spirit reveal about artistic inspiration and purpose?
  • What does God's role as the Creator teach us about our own roles as sub-creators?
  • How does Christ's role as the divine Logos model for us our own use of language, esp. metaphor?
  • How does God's creative wisdom model for us in part the purpose of literary study?
  • How does God's truth partake of and challenge the little truths of literature?
  • How do God's love and righteousness play a role in the ethics of literature?
  • How does God's judgment place limits on literary experience?
  • How can the Church's expression of Christ's mission be exercised in literature?
  • In what ways can literature be a redemptive practice?
  • In what ways is the drama of redemption both a tragic and a comic pattern for literature?
  • What does God's purpose in history tell us about the study of literary history, culture, and tradition?
  • What does God's method of inspiration and the process of hermeneutics teach us about the values and limits of language and interpretation?
  • What part does God's glory play in the literary work being a work of beauty?
  • How does God give purpose and meaning to our artistic acts?
  • In what sense are the arts a vocation and calling from God?