- wonder how the people involved are feeling
- evaluate their social positions
- conjecture about the social structure of the people involved
- have your feelings temporarily affected
- become an observer of this conflict
- 'read' not only what was said, but what was left unsaid
- imagine their feelings, desires and results of their interactions
- fill in the 'gaps' about their characters
- simultaneously develop them not as they really were, but as you imagined them to be
- become a participant in the actions of their tale
- ask questions about the nature of the characters
- ask the events of their story
- ask their and your emotional responses to the story line
These are all the same kinds of questions that a literary critic asks when reading a work of fiction. They become :
- an evaluator
- an interpretor
- a participant in the story itself
Names of elements that literary critics use in order to help them articulate and analyze their literary works.
- author
- reader
- narrator
- narratee
- etc.
One critic, the Russian writer, essayist, and literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) coined the term *dialogic heteroglossia ("many voices in multiple conversations") to explain the various conversations occurring in one literary genre, the novel.
Technical vocabulary
- explain constituent elements
- avenues to discovering their meanings
