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 kind of feel that OP is cobbling themselves by starting with difficult novels that are somewhat difficult to relate to. I have no idea what most author’s lives were like, and why historical references are important. If I want to read at a deeper level, then I need to research a bunch of stuff, too. Because no one knows all the things, and you have to start somewhere.
You mean “hobbling”. You hobble a horse at night by tying ropes to bind together it legs. Cobble stone is a kind of rock you make roads with.
Yes, I do! Thanks for the correction. I knew it wasn’t quite the right word, but couldn’t find the right one.