• Writing

 

 

 

 

 

Adapted from Robert F. Berkhofer, "Demystifying Historical Authority: Critical Textual Analysis in the Classroom,"
Perspectives 26 (February 1988): 14-16 and courtesy of Clark Gilpin, the University of Chicago.

 

The purpose of a critical or analytical review is to see through the surface of a text to its inner workings. It is not often the case that a summary that follows the author's own organization will actually provide you or anyone with whom you discuss the work an adequate understanding of the contents as a set of arguments or a narrative embodying a cluster of presuppositions. In a critical review you are probing the author's main points, assessing the way in which these points were explicated, and calling attention to the larger framework of assumptions that order the text. The following list of topics is intended to assist you in this analytic task of identifying methods and assumptions in the texts you read for this course.

1. Purposes and Goals.

A. What are the author's purposes or goals in writing? Are these achieved?

B. Do you see major themes in the work that are not among the author's stated purposes?

C. Are there topics that, in relation to the author's purposes, are conspicuous by their absence?

2. Models of the Cosmos, Society, and the Religious Community.

A. What does the author presume about the nature of the cosmos or "the whole?"

B. In what ways, if any, does God or the Absolute act within or upon this cosmos?

C. What does the author presume about the nature of economic, educational, political, and ecclesial arrangements in the society?

D. Does the society have classes as well as groups? Where and how is power exercised?

E. Does the author presume that consensual agreement or conflict is the natural condition of social interaction?

F. What are the author's moral ideals or moral rules, and how do these stand related to the workings of society?

3. Models of Human Nature.

A. Does the author presume that human beings change easily or only with difficulty?

B. Are there overarching patterns of change or development that arise from willed human action?
-- Or, does change come from unanticipated consequences of these human actions?
-- Or, does change come from larger forces and structures acting upon human beings?

C. Does society, in a sense, create human beings or do human beings create society?

D. To what extent are human beings constrained by culture and social institutions, or to what extent are they free to create what they will?

 

 

 

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