Essay - Those Who Advocate A Qualitative Methods of Analysing A Text...

Those who advocate a qu*****litative methods of analysing a text - like those who advocate quantitative ***** for such an analysis - often appear to be fighting for the soul of the reader and even of literature *****mselves as they passionately argue for one form ***** analysis over the *****.

But, while the impassi*****d literary warriors on either side might not want to admit to this fact, it ***** well ***** that there is no single correct way to analyze a text. Or rather there may ***** be no ***** correct way to analyse every text. There may ***** one best ***** for each text, requiring us to consider local defin*****ions of analysis ***** than universal ones.

Before we look more generally at this issue, let us attempt ***** apply ***** principle to an actual example. We may perform a qualitative analysis of a Je*****nette Winterspoon novel as a way of demonstrating ***** it would perhaps be impossible to analyse this particular text from a quantitative point of view.

It is no accident that Jeanette Winterspoon means to seduce us with her slim novel Written on the Body. For the book is meant to c*****vey ***** us what physical love means through ***** act ***** making us complicit. While the work is certainly meant to be admired as a very clever act of literary craft - and legerdemain - it is also intended to lure us in***** the world of passion ***** we tend to think ***** as absolutely individual but that is in f***** collective.

Whet***** or not ***** h***** read ***** work of French sociologist Emile Durkheim is not clear, but it is impossible to read Written on the Body and not think of Durkheim's ***** on suicide. Initially one might think that the two have *****hing ********** in common, but in fact ***** are tied toge*****r by one ***** the most profoundly important understandings of human nature. "I ***** you is al*****s a quotation," Winterspoon writes, and by th***** she means not ********** sayer ***** these words is in any way insincere or mocking. But rather that even in our ***** *****timate moments we remain a part of society, we remained touched by culture. Durkheim found ***** this is true even in that most profoundly singular of acts, *****. ***** looks not to death but ***** life ***** to passion. And she suggests ***** we can through passion escape social constrictions. ***** in the end ***** do not *****lieve her, f***** ***** her peculiar narrator ***** imprisoned - and given life - by being among the company ***** humans.

Which does not mean that Winterspoon is not capable of making us think ***** deeply about the balance in ***** person between what seems to be ***** ***** unique and what seems to ***** socially ***** culturally conditioned by the *****e of a very peculiar sort ***** ***** - one who has in fact no body upon which to write.

The novel tells the story of Louise, who