what are the three elements that made up the cycle of reading literature?

Answer 1

I'm sure this is a good, serious question, and it deals with a topic that I very much like to address. But I simply can't make out what you want to know. There are many critics, scholars, and researchers who deal with elements in reading literature, but I doubt that anyone could justify a statement that there are only three elements or any one cycle.

One of the most basic analyses has identified four elements in reading literature: (1) engagement; that is getting personally involved in a story, play or poem; (2) perception; that is, understanding its literal meaning and/or describing its form; (3) interpretation; that is, "reading between the lines," making inferences or drawing conclusions about the meaning, theme, intention, and the like, of a literary work; and (4) evaluation; that is, assessing the effectiveness or value of the story, poem, or play.

Take, for example, Tom Sawyer. (1) Engagement takes place when a reader gets involved int he story, identifies with one or more of the characters, feels a sense of tension about the outcome, relates the story to his/her own personal experience, laughs at the humor and keeps turning the pages to figure out what will happen. Engagement is the initial experience of the work. The engaged reader will be interested in Tom and his adventures, and will enjoy his getting the fence white-washed, his attraction to Becky Thatcher, Huck and Tom's overhearing "Injun Joe" in the graveyard, the boys' playing pirates and attending their own funerals, Tom and Becky getting lost in the cave.

(2) Perception is stepping outside the work and understanding it--listing the main characters, the main events, describing the setting, understanding how the story ends, remembering significant details, commenting on the form of the novel. The perceptive reader, for example, will notice the relationship between Tom and Aunt Polly, Tom and Sid or Mary, Tom and Huck Finn, Tom and the Thatchers, and the like. The perceptive reader will be able to describe the town, the river, the cave, and their relation to each other.

(3) Interpretation of the novel requires one to see it in relation to the world from which it sprang or the life of its author, to other works of literature, to universal human experience, and so forth. The interpreter may see Tom Sawyer as Mark Twain's idealization of his own youth, as a realistic depiction of 19th century Hannibal, Missouri, or as a flattening or stereotyping of the American Midwest. Tom may be seen as the "romantic," living in his imagination and in an unreal world of his own making; Huck Finn may be seen as the "realist," living in the here and now, questioning or refusing to accept Tom's version of what's going on; Sid may be seen as the "moralist" or "conformist," accepting grown-ups' or authorities' version of what is real and important. The novel as a whole may been seen as "the declaration of independence" of American children's literature or boys' stories, establishing a culture distinct from that of England or European stories.

(4) Evaluation, of course, requires the application of pre-established criteria in judging the quality of a work of literature. Does it appeal to young readers? Is it credible? Are the characters fully developed and interesting? And the like. Controversy enters especially when some evaluators hold moral values as a criterion and require that a literature work "teach" its readers; whereas other evaluators reject literature that is "pedantic" or "moralistic," using literature to manipulate readers' values and world views.

Though these four elements may be separated and identified as "phases" or "aspects" of reading, of course they are interdependent in practice. What I define as good literature will influence whether I become engaged in a work; how I perceive the literal meaning will underlie my interpretations; whether I enjoy interpreting symbols and analyzing the author's craft will contribute to or distract me from engagement; how I interpret a work in relation to the "real" world or to other literature will help determine how effective I think it is.

I may have oversimplified your question, by applying it primarily to children's literature. On the other hand, I may have overcomplicated my response by going beyond a simple definition of reading as decoding (which modern reading theorists involved in the No Child Left Behind legislation would prefer).

I think you need to ask the question again, be more explicit about what you mean or want to know, and give some explanatory details.