Teaching the Classics: Basic Seminar

“Literary Analysis” is an unfortunate term in some respects. First, it sounds technical and complicated, and evokes images of scientific dissection, as if a story were being torn apart and impersonally scrutinized under a microscope.

We don’t mean any of those things by the term, but until we think of a better phrase, we use this one in our own peculiar way.

To analyze something is to examine it closely so that you can understand it. When applied to literature, this simply means reading carefully to find out what the author is trying to say. The trouble is that “reading carefully” is easier said than done, especially for the novice reader.

Here’s where “analysis” comes in. Honest literary analysis simply recognizes and observes the structural elements that make up any story — things like exposition, rising action, climax, denouement, and conclusion — in effort to see how an author weaves them together to emphasize his main ideas. This process can dramatically deepen our understanding of an author’s book, thereby deepening our appreciation and enjoyment of the story. After all, who can fully enjoy what he doesn’t understand?

This doesn’t mean we will ever come to the end of our understanding of a book. Because literature is linguistic art and language is associative, readers must apply their own experience to understand an author’s themes. Understanding is a process that begs conversation, and indeed the field of literature comprises a vast community of readers and scholars who have chimed in to offer their own perspective about what individual authors might have been saying through their unique literary works. Their scholarly interpretive efforts, which comprise the best portion of the field of literary criticism, explain from their unique position as readers the ideas they understand an author to express through a given work of literature. 

The associative nature of language, however, suggests that speaking and listening alike are challenging propositions. It is as hard to say exactly what you mean as it is hard to understand another’s meaning. This inherent difficulty only intensifies the importance of teaching students to read and think carefully to arrive at an honest interpretation of an author’s story.

There is danger in refusing to understand an author on his own terms: we may speak over him and come away touting our own opinions instead of engaging with his. As C.S. Lewis says in An Experiment in Criticism, this kind of reading fails to expand our experience or understanding — fails to deliver us from the isolation of the self. When we read to “make something” of the stories we encounter, we strip mine them for propaganda and meet only ourselves continually. In the same way that paying close attention to a neighbor during a friendly conversation requires effort of the listener, reading carefully to uncover an author’s implicit meaning requires concentration and patient scholarship. The truth is, literary analysis is neither impersonal, technical, nor complicated. Good reading, like good listening, considers the other and entertains his thoughts charitably and thoughtfully. Though this kind of reading can be demanding, its rewards prove well worth the effort.