Denamarie Ercolani

"And if an exploration of a particular culture will lead to a heightened understanding of a work of literature produced within that culture, so too a careful reading of a work of literature will lead to a heightened understanding of the culture within which it was produced" (Greenblatt 438).

Culture and literature depend on one another. Literature needs the culture to produce new ideas and suggestions to write about; and culture feeds of literature by looking back at works and understanding the themes and values at that time. So it seems to me that cultural criticism is a good thing. =]

A cultural analysis needs to go beyond the text though to establish links between the text and values, institutions and practices elsewhere in the culture. These links should not be considered a close reading. Literary texts are cultural by virtue of social values and contexts that they have themselves successfully absorbed, not just because of the reference to the world beyond themselves.

As Jay puts it nicely, Literature, or at least a majority of it, tries to find something that was against a culture, and through imagery and dialogue, the author completes the task of portraying a different spin on the representative culture portrayed in that story.