Good readings are open to the otherness and alterity of the text. In [[Singularity of Literature (2004)]], [[Derek Attridge]] calls this ***creative*** reading. [[Eve Sedgwick]]'s contrast between paranoid reading and reparative reading is arguably about this idea. Bad readings, those that [[bad readings treat texts like a symbolic formula to be worked out|treat texts like a symbolic formula to be worked out]], are an example of working from the outside-in. In my doctoral dissertation, I argued that the "inside-out" approach was even true in the case of [[metonymy]]. Normally, [[metonymy relies on pre-existing chains of knowledge]], and so, as Elaine Freedgood argues, a strong metonymic reading requires “a lengthy metonymic search beyond the covers of the text” (5). You have to find what the referents are. What connotations and associations would a Victorian reader bring to the text? However, I argued that in the context of a novel, metonymic signs don't appear in isolation; over the course of a long narrative, the novel has a chance to [[texts tell you what they mean|tell you]] what the metonymic meaning is (and it play with that meaning, re-shape it, subvert it, etc.).