I want to study literature. I’m not an English Literature major or anything related, but I feel a pull to it. I wouldn’t mind dissecting and analyzing a text. So I figured I’d give it a try on my own.

I read about 80% of Paradise Lost and could follow along easily. On a surface level I understood the story. But then I watched a series of lectures from a Yale professor where he deep dives into the nuances of every line and what they meant to Milton on a personal level, along with hidden possible meanings and metaphors. I was left both amazed and feeling like I’m too dumb for this.

So I tried again.

I read the prologue of Beowulf… and there’s a lot I don’t understand. Just in the first few lines, whats a “foundling”? What’s a “whale-road”? I know I can watch videos of people explaining it, but that seems like having the answers just handed to me.

I want to have the skills to read a text and proficiently find an essays worth of insight within it. Maybe I’m just underestimating myself, but I feel like the world has so many highly intelligent, quick-minded people, and I’m sadly and frustratingly not one of them.

  • laughingheart66@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Don’t get discouraged. It’s not something that you just intuitively know how to do, it’s something that’s learned. You’re putting in the work by watching videos and using other sources to get a deeper understanding of a text. That’s half the battle. It is something that will start to come naturally to you and you’re not stupid for having to use outside sources to understand a certain work better. I’ve been studying literature for years and I can make my own interpretations but I still use other peoples analyses as a jumping off point for my own, especially when there’s historical references and context that we’d have to take multiple history classes to understand. It’s an ongoing education and a lot of textual analysis builds off itself. You’re doing great and you’re not stupid or slow for not immediately grasping it!