I appreciated Peter Barry's instruction to stop and think about my study of literature to date. As one of the few non English degreed students in our class, I often feel like the wrong color duck in the pond. I did have a time in my undergrad period where I was an English major, and I did take a surprising number of English classes (mostly writing classes) through the 8 years I spent earning my degree in Marketing.
I don't remember not knowing how to read. I didn't go to Kindergarten because there was no public Kindergarten where we lived when I was 5, but I went to first grade already reading whole books and knowing how to write in cursive. I had a wonderful English teacher in high school who recommended that we set a goal of reading at least 50 books a year. I accomplished that for many years, but I was an undisciplined reader. I read whatever interested me or whatever was handy. I rarely discussed it with people and never looked at criticism. So my reading was a kind of close reading. It didn't occur to me to wonder about the author or look into the historical period. I learned a lot about a lot of things, but could only grab onto the things I had some understanding of.
Graduate studies have been an eye opener because so much more is expected. A part of me resists looking so deeply into literature's context, maybe because it reveals so much about the author. As a writer, I am uncomfortable knowing that I may betray my secrets in my writing. Furthermore, I suspect that I am betrayed by my response to literature, and that worries me too.
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So, did you ever feel 'cheated' since you didn't have anyone to discuss your close reading with? Or because you didn't find out about the author? Do you think discussing literature and knowing a little background is important to accomplish a close reading? This is something I always struggle with as a teacher and close reader. I have apporached this in many different ways: read the text first only for analysis of content, style, and form, then learn about the context and author. I think it is important to do both, but the new critics seem to want to divorce the author from the text causing the death of the author. Can that really happen in order to interpret the text?
ReplyDeleteI'm all for recognizing an individual for his/her work as far as being an author goes. But does it matter if someone confuses the author of "Mrs. Dalloway" or "The Iliad"? I think whatever your answer to that question is dictates what theoretical school you come from.
ReplyDeleteConsider what your response to a reading would be if you didn't know who wrote it. Would it really matter? Can a piece speak for itself or for a larger context? Also, does a work that is so masterfully crafted transcend authorship? I agree with what Eliot and Shelley drove at when discussing the poet's role in writing poetry; so what about the author?
My eighth grade students hated to discuss pieces that we'd read. They didn't want to dissect to achieve the "larger meaning". They just wanted to receive the story as it was. Is this the perspective of an uneducated mind or a mind that accepts the language, takes what it needs, and has a more personal experience? Obviously, we don't have a consensus.
ReplyDeleteI think that the reader discovers their own secrets when they read, though our secrets are probably also up for grabs, too. I think that, rather than trying to discover what an author "really means," we--as readers or critics--should analyze what we WANT something to mean. I think that our desire to find meaning has more to do with what we find than what was originally implied.
ReplyDeleteAh, betrayal! I don't think you need to be worried about what you give away as an author as, according to Peckham, it "is clear that uncertainty is the very condition of interpretation" (Newton 106). When we act as authors, we have little control over how our work may be understood by a broad range of people. As readers, our perceptions of the work of others may be colored by our own experiences, etc. So never fear- jump in!
ReplyDeleteI don't think that we necessarily need to discuss books that we've read with others to enjoy or gain value from our reading. I have been engaged in my own little "me vs. english" struggle over here, and at this point in my evolution as a student of literature I feel that sometimes overly evaluating and critiqueing a written piece can take away from the pure enjoyment of reading.
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