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.

  • The_InvisibleWoman@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Honestly you have jumped right in at the deep end - these are difficult texts. Why not try picking a novel you would like to read and see if you can find some reading group questions online. Start with a 20th century classic like Gatsby, Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird or even a Charles Dickens if you want to go back further. There are far more enjoyable books. Read the.novel, then go back and read the introduction and then look for some analysis questions.

    I’m not sure what country you are in but in later stages of high school, they do some pretty good analysis of texts and all the texts studied at these levels have accompanying study books. Those are a great place to start.