"The art of reading is a process of becoming conscious." Wolfgang Iser
"Those who fail to re-read are obliged to read the same story everywhere." Roland Barthes
"One must be an inventor to read well. . . . There's then creative reading as well as creative writing."
Emerson, "The American Scholar"
"Imaginative experience...is an immense sensibility ...The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implications of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern, the conditions of feeling life, so completely that you are well on your way to knowing any particular corner of it." Henry James, The Art of Fiction

Re-Reading is an Imaginative Experience = Reading "into" the work for discovery, problem-solving (Holistic, interactive, questioning, recreative, cultural); To some degree, this kind of reading is re-writing, teasing out a "hidden" story or implications.

• Reading to connect, fill in gaps
• Asking questions
• Inferring motivations and predicting outcomes
• Arriving at conclusions
• Reading for "otherness" as well as self-discovery
• Connecting text with other texts, experiences

Re-reading Questions

1. Exploring the text

• Look up any words or allusions you are unsure about
• Look for any gaps you have have read over and into quickly
• Look for any repetitions or patterns in the story

• How do you now account for sections that seemed irrelevant or tangential on your first reading?
• Where do you see foreshadowing of the climax and resolution of the story? How effective are they?
• Is the story more or less interesting this time, now that you know the plot?
• What conflicts do you see now? Any more or any different ones? Are they all resolved or are any left open? If open, then why?
• If there are any dislocations in order (e.g. of time or place) in the story, do you see any logic behind the arrangement?

• How are the different characters defined--by words, actions (including thoughts and emotions), dress, setting, narrative point of view, etc?
• Are the characters revealed directly or indirectly?
• What purposes do any minor characters serve? Do any characters act as "foils" for each other, similar yet different in significant ways?
• If a character changes, why and how does he or she change? Or did your attitude toward a character change because you know him or her better?
• Are the characters round (complex) or flat (one-dimensional)?
• How does the author cause you to sympathize with certain characters?
• How does your response--sympathy or lack of sympathy--contribute to your judgment of the conflict and the "meaning" of the story?

• How does the point of view help shape the story and its meaning?
• What in the narrator's language tells you what sort of person he/she is and what his/her strengths and limitations might be?

• Does setting play a major role in the story? What might that be? Could this same story have happened in another place and time?
• Is the setting a kind of character in the story? If so, how is it functioning?

• What additional dimensions of representation do you now see in certain characters, the setting, or the situation(s).
• ´How would you characterize the style of this story? Is it heavily shaped by a narrator?
• Does the style ever shift dramatically? If so, why?

• Are there any details, sentences, or repetitions that particularly embody a "theme" in the story?
• Does the author ever seem to "editorialize" about the story's meaning? Is she/he to be trusted?
• Does the story reinforce values that you hold; does it also challenge these values to any degree?

• How do you think the life or the age, gender, race, social or financial status of the author might be relevant to this story?
• hat do you know about the time, the place, and social, cultural, and/or political conditions of the work? Which of these might be relevant to this particular text?

• What expectations do you have a story like this? How does it meet or disappoint those expectations?
• How do your relevant personal experiences (as recorded in your free association) match or clash with those suggested in the poem? Are they so strong that they might shape your interpretation?
• What differences (from the author) in age, race, gender, social or political status, etc. might color and shape your reading of this poem?