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.

  • notasweetsperson@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    It’s built upon, not something that happens all at once and, you are trekking out solo! A great way to expand (that I have personally found) is reading the subject matter that is lifted from the text as well. I have been reading a lot of philosophy, I also took a Rhetorical Analysis class once upon a time, audited a free class on works of fiction, and watch free stuff online all the time (there is a surprising amount that is accessible and freeeee!) and the more I learn the more I see. Sometimes, I know something is there, but I am just not seeing it. I go to sparknotes, or lurk on what people are discussing. I haunt Goodreads a LOT. I am new here, but am finding places here to share too which has been so fun ^_^ keep at it!