ABSTRACT
Literary criticism provides methods for closely analyzing texts, from parsing and linguistics to the philosophically influenced methods of cultural theory. Scholars in the humanities have long studied the complexities of narrative, eventually distinguishing the field of narratology and that of narrative theology, where the critic looks at how the elements of the narrative convey theological meaning. The social sciences, especially psychology, inform both the method of reading narratives of violence and the study of historical battering by revealing the psychology of victims and batterers, and the cycles of violence that victims endured. In addition, the insights of social theory have enhanced rhetorical criticism in the search to illuminate the social construction of a text by its author and readers, as well as its reception by the audience of the period. A greater awareness of cultural differences enlightens the diversity of interpretive strategies that contemporary scholars bring to bear on texts.
