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.
Wanting to deepen your understanding of literature is a great thing.
But Paradise Lost is an extremely rich and allusive poem, and you absolutely should not beat yourself up for not fully comprehending it on the first read.
Well, just to start with Milton: have you read the Bible? That’s a foundational text for LOTS of Western literature, to speak nothing of how crucial it is in understanding Paradise Lost.
Obviously the Bible has baggage. Replace it with the Iliad. Or Shakespeare. Or a sensible modern translation of Beowulf, or one that has annotations that don’t leave you feeling like a dumbass.
I guess my advice is to start by reading more widely, instead of going straight into critical analysis of dense works.
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 I have no idea what most author’s lives were like, and why historical references are important.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.