An Introduction to Critical Reading by Lee.
Most interpretations are primarily text based, reader based, or context based.
Reader-based interpretation assumes that the meaning of the text is created by the reader in the act of reading. Context-based interpretations consider the text in relation to biographical, historical, and cultural information. They assume that the meaning of the text is not exclusively in the text or in the reader but is affected by the relationship of text and reader to the cultural issues surrounding the creation of the text, its present circumstances, or the cultural circumstances of the reader. The text-based strategy of formalism examines the interrelationship of the formal elements of a text, such as theme, plot, setting, characterization, the expression of ideas, special use of language, metaphor, tone, rhyme, meter, and all other stylistic qualities. The formalist is especially interested in irony, the use of language that says one thing but means another.