Although both literary study and discourse analysis examine texts and oral discourses, literary study tends to emphasize the totality of the text while discourse analysis seeks to isolate manageable elements and structures to validate hypotheses about mental processes. Interaction has recently occurred between the two disciplines in "poetics,""structuralism," and the study of "story grammars." Discourse analysis can be useful in literary study, particularly in the analysis of literature's mostly unconscious "codes," the aspect of literature studied by the new "poetics." Discourse analysis delineates the structural elements and the relationships between them in various types of discourse. To judge the validity of a given discourse analysis theory, a discourse must be seen as a reaction to human experience, and analysis of discourse should be an attempt to explain the relationship between the discourse and the experience. The relationship is part of the continuum between actual world, experience, discourse, and analysis. As an application to the teaching of literature, a useful method might be one in which the teacher begins with showing the structure of "simple stories" and builds to more sophisticated texts, isolating elements to be taught. (DF)