Reading Literature After Deconstruction
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Reading Literature After Deconstruction By Robert Lumsden

Chapter 1:  What Happens? What Is to Be Done? A Paean to Bricolage
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In contrast to a ‘discontinuities’ reading, items provided in the syntagm of an ‘associational’ patterning will seem naturally to belong together, to flow one into the next, as part of a principle of coherence already inherent in the syntactic string—figures of speech, for instance, or lexical or phrasal echoes.

The three most likely pairings of these approaches will be a surface-to-depths and discontinuities reading combined or overlapping; a surface-to-depths and associational reading in tandem; or an associational and discontinuities reading in combination. A reading based on the first two sets or switching between them is probably more likely than a reading response based on the third, though here, as elsewhere, there is no hard and fast rule. The user pays himself in his own coin. The reader decides.

4. Readings

“Little Red-Cap” (Little Red Riding Hood), The Brothers Grimm

The Story

Once upon a time there was a dear little girl who was loved by everyone who looked at her, but most of all by her grandmother, and there was nothing that she would not have given to the child. Once she gave her a little cap of red velvet, which suited her so well that she would never wear anything else; so she was always called “Little Red-Cap.”
One day her mother said to her: “Come, Little Red-Cap, here is a piece of cake and a bottle of wine; take them to your grandmother, she is ill and weak, and they will do her good. Set out before it gets hot, and when you are going, walk nicely and quietly and do not run off the path, or you may fall and break the bottle, and then your grandmother will get nothing; and when you go into her room, don’t forget to say, ‘Good morning,’ and don’t peep into every corner before you do it.”
“I will take great care,” said Little Red-Cap to her mother, and gave her hand on it.