Happy to participate:
To what extent do you analyze literature? Are you more analytical in your reading if you know you're going to review the book? Is analysis useful in helping you understand and appreciate literature, or does it detract from your readerly experience?
That's a question I've always wanted to answer. In short, my answer would be that I analyze literature to the extreme (and love it), just not in the 'proper' way.
My major had no relation to literature whatsoever, but I have a minor diploma in language so I had the opportunity to study a bit of literature - naturally, I enjoyed it a lot. It was nice, but not enough. What I think is that the more you diversify your reading, the more you can input into your analysis. Have you read Freud? Hobbes? Foucault? Have you read lots and lots and lots of philosophy? Of history? If you have, your analysis is suddenly at a whole new level.
Analysing literature in a school-like manner is always helpful to understand 'what the writer tried to say', but it can be stale, boring, uncreative and totally misleading. Eventually, it helps only people who couldn't get the meaning of a book unless it was explained to them (which is totally fine when you're reading James Joyce - heck, even those who do the explaining have no idea what he's talking about- but it's a bit too much if you can't get the Great Gatsby in most of its magnificence).
There's this thing called intertextuality (Derrida talks a lot about it, but trust me, you don't want to read Derrida anytime soon) and roughly means that everything we read as 'text' affects all our other 'texts'. So when we talk about literature, if you have read Freud you can clearly see it in Hamlet - or even the Lion King - for example, and make the connection in multiple layers.
There's this other thing for me as well. It has no name, but I could describe it as a deep love for every living thing and a sheer amazement for all things human. Literature, real, good, solid literature, makes me feel alive because it cherishes human weakness in an unparalleled way, a way that manages to speak the ineffable.
The ideal recipe, I think, is a quarter of intertextuality and three quarters of that other thing.
P.S.: Regarding the second question, as you probably guessed from this post and from my reviews, I'm a pretty messy, whimsical person. I read for enjoyment, I write for enjoyment, I share for enjoyment. The experience is still the same.
5 comments:
I find that sometimes the analytical part of my brain comes on even if its not a book that really needs analyzing and that's when I seem to forget to read the book for pure enjoyment. But oddly enough I find that when I am reading a dense book for pure enjoyment, that I get more out of the book than if I was purposefully trying to find things for analysis.
Case in point. In the past month I have read two books that were published around the same time as each other, Persuasion and Frankenstein. Persuasion I found I got really nothing out of the book because I was so focused on getting the book done for my book club and finding something of meaning in the book for the discussion. But with Frankenstein, which I read for pure pleasure, I found that I got more out of the book, despite that it was only about 200 pages. There was something about how man's need to create something that spoke to me and how sometimes our own creations turn out not what we want them be and become more bothersome than our original intentions.
I suppose my point is that sometimes to get the most meaning out of a book, we need to just enjoy it and roll with the book rather than hanging on every word or sentence trying to find some meaning that may not even be there.
Oh yes, I totally agree. This is why I'm not very fond of what I called school-like analysis. When you read for enjoyment you can definitely see all the intricate patterns unfolding, so there's no need to break the text word by word - it can come naturally, if you just sit and reflect upon what the text made you feel.
Thanks for dropping by btw! :)
Hello! I'm very happy to find a blog that's proud to display quotes by Maya Angelou as well as Zac Efron :)
"heck, even those who do the explaining have no idea what he's talking about" - I cannot for the life of me understand Joyce's works. Dubliners was great but with Ulysses, I couldn't even get past simple comprehension let alone analyze it!
"Literature, real, good, solid literature, makes me feel alive." This is sentiment is breathtaking and echoes how I feel.
Stephanie ~Misfit Salon~
Great point when you say about intertextuality. It's inevitable, you're right. I tend to compare texts and to recognize themes and motifs but it happens to me even watching films or series. I can't avoid appreciating something when it's very good in its genre nor I can avoid disliking something when its very bad.
This discussion is so interesting! I'm really happy I took part in this.
@Stephanie
Thanks for the visit :) Ulysses is the thorn in my heart, I can't ever, ever finish it.
@Maria
Yes, this exactly! It's really fun, because you get to see all those things other people can't think of easily...You can use so many points of view. Interpretation uses other stories to talk about stories. That's all humans ever do - we tell and listen to stories about ourselves :)
and thanks for commenting!
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