Vladimir E. Alexandrov advocates a broad revision of the academic study of literature and proposes an adaptive, text-specific reading methodology that is designed to minimize the circularity of interpretation inherent in the act of reading. He illustrates this method on the example of Tolstoy's classic novel via a detailed "map" of the different possible readings that the novel can support. Anna Karenina emerges as deeply conflicted, polyvalent, and quite unlike what one finds in other critical studies.