Critic speak is tough, but we've got you covered.
Quote :"Unity Identity Text Self" Quote 1
The unity we find in literary texts is impregnated with the identity that finds that unity. This is simply to say that my reading of a certain literary work will differ from yours or his or hers. As readers, each of us will bring different kinds of external information to bear. Each will seek out the particular themes that concern him. Each will have different ways of making the text into an experience with a coherence and significance that satisfies.
When each of us reads a book, we make sense of it in our own unique way. And that's because each of us has a different identity, a different past, and different experiences.
Someone who grew up in Mississippi is going to read The Sound and the Fury differently from someone who grew up in New York, for example. Those readers will concentrate on different themes and imagery, and they'll come to different conclusions about what the novel is saying.
If you're a Southerner from Mississippi like Faulkner, you might see The Sound and the Fury as an allegory for how the South fell apart. If you have lots of family issues, you might read the novel as a story about how dysfunctional family life is. If you're African American, you might read the novel and see just how messed up race relations were back in the day in the South. Depending on who you are, your individual readings will emphasize different themes and issues.
Holland's point is that your personal perspective always influences the way that you approach a literary text. We all have different identities, experiences, and backgrounds. Your unique identity or point of view is going to shape the way you read literature. You can't help it. You don't check your identity at the door when you start reading a book: it's always there, and it informs the way you read everything.
Quote :"Unity Identity Text Self" Quote 2
[I]dentity re-creates itself, or, to put it another way, style—in the sense of personal style—creates itself. That is, all of us, as we read, use the literary work to symbolize and finally to replicate ourselves. We work out through the text our own characteristic patterns of desire and adaptation. We interact with the work, making it part of our own psychic economy and making ourselves part of the literary work—as we interpret it.
We project ourselves onto the texts we read. The text becomes like a cinema screen onto which we can project all of our issues: our relationship to Mommy and Daddy, our fear of commitment, our desire to be the next Bill Gates or Miley Cyrus.
Basically, a work of literature becomes an extension of us: it's all about our own psychology and our own ego. Reading is kind of like going to the therapist, since we use the text to work out our own psychological issues.
Basically: we all have baggage, and the texts we read reflect that baggage right back to us.