Laine Walston

ECM 4910
Reflection 4
Knowledge of
critical methodologies

This artifact is an essay on two critical methodologies on the short story Bartleby, The

Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street. This essay was written in the class critical methodologies

that I took this past semester. The two methodologies that I talked about in my essay were new

criticism and reader response criticism.

While writing this essay, I had to interpret the short story first through new criticism

which involved a close reading. In addition to the close reading, I had to analyze each aspect of

the text. While doing the close reading, you have to understand the narrator and his point of

view. After that, you can obtain an understanding of the type of language he uses. Once you un-

derstand the language then it will be easier to analyze the story line and his importance within

the plot.

On the other hand, from a readers response criticism this involves the type of reading

process that will occur. This requires the readers to understand how to read a person within the

text. This involves analyzing peoples behaviors and understanding what they do within the

story. Once you start to understand how the characters think, then you can understand their as-

pect of the plot through their actions. This can be described as having not just one text, but many

different texts that are being read. For example, this may include descriptions of what characters

look like, how they act, or even how they talk. This then gives the readers an inside look into

how these characters can be read.

 These two methodologies go hand-in-hand because they both involve analyzing and

closely reading the characters and how they think and play a role in the short story. This artifact

demonstrates my ability to read using different critical theories, and that awareness helps differ-

entiate these interpretations.