Text Criticism Theory
I will begin with the field in which I do most of my professional work—literary studies. Since not everyone is an expert in literary studies, allow me to start with some elementary principles familiar to those already involved with literature but that may not be so obvious to those who are not. Chronologically, first, we have writers creating literary texts, which I broadly define as works written with the use of the imagination, hence the usual term imaginative literature or creative writing. After these literary texts are produced, certain readers try to interpret them, producing what is known as literary criticism, hence the term literary critics. The next step after literary criticism is thinking of the works of literature—as well as the works of literary criticism—as a whole; this more generalized type of literary study is usually called literary theory. From the progression of literary text to critical text to theoretical text, we can see that a lot depends on the quantity and the quality of the literary texts that are at the beginning of the process. Without sounding simplistic, this is the familiar “garbage in, garbage out” syndrome.
Isagani R. Cruz. “Challenging ISI Thomson Scientific’s Journal Citation Reports” portal: Libraries and the Academy 8.1 (2008): 6-7.
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