ABSTRACT
As with the classification systems of genres and text types, the approaches to literary texts subscribe to a number of divergent methodologies. The following sections show that literary interpretations always reflect a particular institutional, cultural, and historical background. Consecutive or parallel schools represent the various trends in textual studies, at times competing with one another. On the one hand, the various scholarly approaches to literary texts partly overlap; on the other, they differ in their theoretical foundations. The abundance of competing methods in contemporary literary criticism requires a basic familiarity with at least the most important trends and their general approaches.
