What is meant by the term context when referring to literature? Can a book be read with no understanding of its context? thanks

One can read
(and teach) any work without fullof its historical, social, etc. "context."  BUT...
the term "context" has an essential and different meaning for ALL English and Language
Arts teachers and students.

When attempting to understand, explicate, or
analyze a poem, passage, or work as a whole, one must ALWAYS remember to stay in the context,
"the parts of a written or spoken statement that precede or follow a specific word or
passage, usually influencing its meaning or effect."  Thehere would be that one cannot play
golf on a tennis court.  Students and teachers are so quick (and weak) to allow themselves to
bring meanings to text that are outside the text's fundamental and literal context - this is a
cardinal sin of close reading and teaches students that "anything goes."

We must first and foremost use what's called "objective criticism" when
reading works of literature.  This practice is defined as approaching a work as "something
which stands free from the poet, audience, and the environing world.  It describes the literary
product as a self-sufficient object, or else as a world-in-itself, which is to be analyzed and
judged by intrinsic criteria such as complexity, coherence, equilibrium, integrity, and
interrelations of its component elements" (from A Glossary of Literary
Terms by M.H. Abrams, 4th edition, page 37).  Without understanding and appreciating
the literal meanings of the text first, any other "interpretation" is suspect to
erroneous and illogical explication.