SOURCE: Gouwens, David J. “Kierkegaard's Either/Or, Part One: Patterns of Interpretation.” In International Kierkegaard Commentary: Either/Or, Part I, edited by Robert L. Perkins, pp. 5-50. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1995.

In the following essay, Gouwens offers a survey of criticism on Part I of Either/Or according to a variety of critical perspectives.

A book has the remarkable characteristic that it can be interpreted as one pleases.

—“The Seducer's Diary,” Either/Or, 1:374

Ironically or not, the varieties of methods and hermeneutical choices applied to Kierkegaard's Either/Or, 1 over the past forty years bear out the Seducer's observation. A number of literary critical methods naturally find in Either/Or, 1 a rich field of inquiry, such as New Critical, biographical-genetic, literary-historical, comparative literary, studies of fictional technique, and lately postmodernist approaches. But non-literary approaches have also been used, including psychological, computer-analysis, and structural methods.

At first glance it...