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.
That professor has spent countless hours studying, reflecting, researching and perfecting his analysis. It’s like anything else it takes time and practice and a lot of learning. One of the better things I’ve done for my analysis skills to to actually write a review for any book I read. Just taking the time to reflect on why I liked it and why I didn’t did a lot for me. As well as I’m reading and I find myself having strong feelings about the story one way or another, I know I’m going to review it so I try and puzzle out exactly what it is that’s making me either deliriously happy on enraged about the book. And sometimes it’s just a mediocre story but I still try and figure out why I feel that way.