historical events of time; social attitudes and values of readership

characterization, allegorical use of characters to represent types of actions or points of view

relation of plots and subplots; extent to which these may be developed to use circumstances of serial or multi-volume publication

thematic intentions of author; authorial weltanschaung

effect of audience's views; extent to which author reflects views of audience or designs text to support a view to which some members of the audience may object

political intentions of author (e. g. text's bearing on specific issues of day, such as the Union of Scotland and England, unionization or capital punishment)

allusions to or indebtedness to other texts (imitation, parody, variation, counterargument)

literary, cultural, historical allusions

language register--class, region, level of formality (e. g. what kind of language is used by the main characters? their social subordinates?)

use of imagery, symbols, dream sequences, foreshadowing

attention to opening passages and closure, relation of conclusion to tone and values of text

representation of concerns of gender, social class, ethnicity, occupation and nationality

relation of author's life to events in text, narrator's views

relation to traditions of realism, romanticism, gothicism and melodrama, autobiographies and diaries, pastoral romance, travel narrative, utopian vision

the narrator(s) and narrative voice: ubiquity, pervasiveness, "interruptions," consistency, transparency and reliability, relation of narrator to frame(s), relation of narrative voice to that of the implied author, irony

use of free indirect narrative, third or first person voice, mixture of points of view