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| - Pay particular attention to the post-modern dilemmas explored in the texts, specifically:
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| - The struggle for independence at the risk of isolation
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| - The difficulty or impossibility of communicating with others
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| - Recognizing social barriers such as race and gender
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| - The problematic nature of history and nation building
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| - The need for spiritual healing in a spiritually unstable world
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| Critical Theories
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| - Feminist
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| - Psychoanalytic
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| - Sociolinguistic
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| - Postcolonial (also New Historicism)
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| - Reader Response
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| Descriptions of Critical Approaches
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| - Formalism: Focus on the text alone, its formal feature - style, structure, imagery, tone, genre - through close reading. The form and content cannot be separated.
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| - Biographical: Understanding of author's work will increase comprehension of work; explicates the literary work by using insight provided by knowledge of author's life.
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| - Historical: Seeks to understand work by investigating the social, cultural, and intellectual context that produced it (including the author's bio); interested in the meaning the text had for its original audience rather than today, though will also treat how the text has changed over time.
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| - Gender: Examines how sexual identity influences the creation and reception of the work; lookks for ways an author's gender consciously or unconsciously influences his/her work; feminists attempt to challenge "male-produced" assumptions and patriarchal attitudes; examine how images of men and women in work reflect or reject social forces that have historically created inequalities.
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| - Psychological: Investigates the creative process of the writer - his/her mental functions, motivations, behavior; can also be used to investiage the psychological makeup of the fictional character(s).
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| - Sociological: Examines work in its cultural, economic, and political context; explores relationship between artist and society; looks at sociological status of author and at what cultural, economic, or political values a text implicitly or explicitly promotes; also examines the role an audience has in shaping the literature.
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| - Reader Response: Attempts to describe what happens in the reader's mind while interpreting a text; sees reading as part of the creative process; realizes that no text exists independent of reader's interpretation; recognizs inevitable plurality of readings and explores the contradictions.
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