The study of literary context (1) describes how a paragraph or some other unit fits into a larger section of the text, even the whole work. It (2) gains access to literary context by reading the original document attentively. The study of literary context can go on, even if we know nothing about the writer and his times, and nothing about the original readers and their concerns. (3) To exaggerate slightly, literary context allows us to ignore the author and the audience and to study the words of the text by themselves.
