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 paid into Anthony Oliveira’s Patreon for a few months so I could listen to all the episodes of his podcast, The Devil’s Party. It’s a difficult book! Oliveira is a Milton scholar and still finds new stuff.
As some other have mentioned, you’ve started with some heavyweights if this isn’t your thing. Can I suggest The Great Gatsby if you haven’t read it yet? There’s a reason so many Americans read it in early high school.
If you do, try to look for recurring images, words, or ideas. That’s a solid start on its own. And see if you have an emotion about something–what choices has the author made that makes you feel that way (word choices, images, that sort of thing)?
(Also if you haven’t looked it up, a foundling is an abandoned baby or younger child, or one discovered with recently dead parents.)