Literary Theories and Text Analysis

          Every piece of literature, every line of text, is considered modern because it is current in that moment. Modernism essentially makes use of the works of the past. It reuses them and compares them to works that are current. Postmodernism means after modernism and is very similar to modernist works and theories. A lot of modernists like Virginia Woolf use the method of stream of consciousness in their modernist writing. This method has a huge effect on the reader’s interpretation of the text because not every type of writing uses stream of consciousness. Therefore, it is easier for the reader to understand that the writing they are reading is potentially a modern or postmodern work. Other Modernist writers include Friedrich Nietzsche, James Joyce, and T.S. Eliot. Modernism includes Imagism, Symbolism, Futurism, Surrealism, and Expressionism. Modernism is also the most common form of text analysis.

            Structuralism is also a type of writing that can shape the way readers read their works. Structuralists such as Roland Barthes and Roman Jakobson use Structuralism to “look for specific codes within the text that allow meaning to occur” (Bresslers). In this theory, the reader brings in their own ideas and each reader interprets the text differently. While reading a work with a structuralist approach, the reader can find themselves using their own thoughts and ideas and interpreting certain parts of the text with their own opinions. It also concentrates on what the reader needs to know. “Structuralists seem to push both the text and the reader to the background and concentrate their attention on a linguistic theory of communication and interpretation” (Bresslers).