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.

  • KombuchaBot@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Comparing yourself to a Yale professor doing a recorded presentation is unfair, it’s like comparing yourself to a professional musician playing a piano concerto.

    That professor had a lot of help and tuition, and a lot of practice; also, he rehearsed and studied for the presentation. It may be designed to look spontaneous, like these are things he is thinking of for the first time. It’s not; it’s not intended to deceive if they do it that way, just to convey excitement, but it is an unintentionally misleading artifice.

    I recommend that you read some introductory critical literature focusing on work that you really enjoy. Don’t view it as having to scale the heights of world literature, the Miltons and James Joyces etc. Nothing wrong with reading those books, but you risk turning what should be a pleasure into a chore. To discover the ones you do like, get yourself a decent anthology, but not one with condensed books.

    I recommend the Norton Anthology of World Literature, it also has historical and literary essays. You can get it quite cheaply online, and it’s a great read.