When Upton Sinclair visited the stockyards in Chicago, that industrial culture provided the raw materials for his text for The Jungle (an example of culture creating text). However, when The Jungle was printed, its content so affected the reading population that an immediate outcry against the meatpackers ensued (text creating culture). Before the publication of The Jungle, the majority of the meat eating, reading public had no idea of the atrocities within the industry. Also, generations reading The Jungle 100 years after its initial publication have no idea of the horrors that existed, and for the most part, only have Sinclair's text to illustrate these horrors. The text continues to influence culture, regardless of its accuracy or immediacy.
In addition to illustrating the dynamic relationship between culture and text, The Jungle also shows the relative unimportance of authorial intention when it comes to literary analysis. Sinclair's primary focus of socialism did not take hold with readers of his own era, nor did it provide any lasting impression on future generations; yet the continued claim to fame for The Jungle is its exposure of abuse in the meatpacking industry. Instead of having just one integral meaning, texts can have multiple meanings.
Cultural critics see The Jungle as a text that is both representative of time and place as well as simultaneously having an effect on future cultures. They recognize that Sinclair's form did not adhere to traditional genres, so he effectively created his own medium. His text created a kind of power over the industry and was a means of change. Contemporary critics view literature as more than just an autonomous piece of writing isolated from the rest of the world. This does not mean that contemporary critics routinely dismiss literary style and the use of irony, paradox, and metaphor. Rather, they examine how particular texts use (or do not use) particular devices and determine how this affects the reception of a text. Some texts have universal appeal; others are limited to a particular sub-culture within a culture. But all are important. Unlike New Criticism, which tends to be an academic affair, cutting a work off from society, cultural criticism attempts to save and value literature by acknowledging its significance.
