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.
I‘m sure that’s not the case. It’s not a talent you’re born with but something you learn and can train. The Yale professor did not just pick up a book one day and analyzed/interpreted everything. He studied what to look for, how to connect these things with the authors life, the historical context and other works by the same author as well as completely different ones with similar themes. He has a lot of experience and most likely was well prepared for the lecture.
I‘d advise you to study the authors behind the book a bit and try to find connections between their life and their work.
And don’t beat yourself up if you can’t make sense of something instantly, you‘ll get their