Text (literary theory)

{{Multiple issues| {{One source|date=July 2025}} {{More footnotes needed|date=July 2025}} }} {{multiple image|perrow = 2|total_width=400 | image1 = Votive stela of Userhat MET DP226728.jpg|width1=300|height1= | image2 = Byzantium, Constantinople, 11th century - Gospel Book with Commentaries - 1942.152 - Cleveland Museum of Art.tif|width2=300|height2= | image3 = Malnazar - Decorated Incipit Page - Google Art Project.jpg|width3=300|height17= | image4 = BL Royal Vincent of Beauvais.jpg|width4=300|height4= | image5 = Kelmscott Press - The Nature of Gothic by John Ruskin (first page).jpg|width5=300|height5= | image6 = Рекомендуются табаки и папиросы.png|width6=300|height6= | image7 = |width7=300|height7=400 | image8 = |width8=300|height8=400 | footer = Various examples of texts in different languages }} In literary theory, a '''text''' is any object that can be "read", whether this object is a work of literature, a street sign, an arrangement of buildings on a city block, or styles of clothing.{{Citation needed|date=April 2024}} It is a set of signs that is available to be reconstructed by a reader (or observer) if sufficient interpretants are available.{{Citation needed|date=April 2024}} This set of signs is considered in terms of the informative message's ''content'', rather than in terms of its physical form or the medium in which it is represented.{{Citation needed|date=April 2024}} Within the field of literary criticism, "text" also refers to the original information content of a particular piece of writing; that is, the "text" of a work is that primal symbolic arrangement of letters as originally composed, apart from later alterations, deterioration, commentary, translations, paratext, etc. Therefore, when literary criticism is concerned with the determination of a "text", it is concerned with the distinguishing of the original information content from whatever has been added to or subtracted from that content as it appears in a given textual document (that is, a physical representation of text).

Since the history of writing predates the concept of the "text", most texts were not written with this concept in mind. Most written works fall within a narrow range of the types described by text theory. The concept of "text" becomes relevant if and when a "coherent written message is completed and needs to be referred to independently of the circumstances in which it was created."{{Citation needed|date=April 2010}}

==Etymology== The word ''text'' has its origins in Quintilian's ''Institutio Oratoria'', with the statement that "after you have chosen your words, they must be weaved together into a fine and delicate fabric", with the Latin for fabric being ''textum''.

==Uses of the term for analysis of work practice== Relying on literary theory, the notion of text has been used to analyse contemporary work practices. For example, Christensen (2016)<ref>Christensen, L.R. (2016). On Intertext in Chemotherapy: an Ethnography of Text in Medical Practice. Computer Supported Cooperative Work: The Journal of Collaborative Computing and Work Practices. Volume 25, Issue 1, pp 1-38</ref> rely on the concept of text for the analysis of work practice at a hospital.

==References== <references> </references>

==Further reading== {{Refbegin}} * Barry, Peter. ''Beginning Theory: an Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory'', 4th edn. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017. {{ISBN|0-7190-6268-3}}. *Bakhtin, M. M. (1981) ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=JKZztxqdIpgC The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays]''. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin and London: University of Texas Press. * Culler, Jonathan; (1997) ''Literary Theory: a Very Short Introduction''. Oxford: Oxford University Press. {{ISBN|0-19-285383-X}}. * Eagleton, Terry. ''Literary Theory: an Introduction'', 2nd edn. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2011. {{ISBN|0-8166-1251-X}}. * Eagleton, Terry. ''After Theory''. NY: Basic Books, 2003. {{ISBN|0-465-01773-8}}. * Groden, Michael, Martin Kreiswirth, & Imre Szeman, eds. ''The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism'', 2nd edn. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. {{ISBN|0-8018-4560-2}}. * Lodge, David and Nigel Wood, eds. ''Modern Criticism and Theory: a Reader'', 3rd edn. Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2008. * {{cite journal|ol=21613576M|editor1-first=Malcolm|editor1-last=Coulthard|title=Literary Texts: The Application of Linguistic Theory to Literary Discourse|issue=3|journal=Discourse analysis monographs, University of Birmingham English Language Research|issn=0307-1006|author1-first=Roger|author1-last=Pearce|publisher=University of Birmingham|year=1977}} * Patai, Daphne and Wilfrido H. Corral, eds. ''Theory's Empire: an Anthology of Dissent''. NY: Columbia University Press, 2005. {{ISBN|0-231-13417-7}}. * Rabaté, Jean-Michel. ''The Future of Theory''. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. {{ISBN|0-631-23013-0}}. {{Refend}}

Category:Literary theory *