Example: I read the poem, Ode on a Grecian Urn by Keats.
Then a search found out some “SparkNotes” that offer literary criticism (I am defining criticism as viewing something and examining it, not necessarily hostility). Or maybe this site is just analysis? Whichever, it examines the poem.
Themes: The speaker attempts three times to engage with scenes carved into the urn; each time he asks different questions of it. In the first stanza, he examines the picture of the “mad pursuit” and wonders what actual story lies behind the picture: “What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?” Of course, the urn can never tell him the whos, whats, whens, and wheres of the stories it depicts, and the speaker is forced to abandon this line of questioning.
Ok, who would not understand that anyway by reading the poem? Of course the vase doesn’t respond with language.
I dont get it; why do we need commentary on poems? Why not just read them? I ain’t no literary genius but I dont get how anyone would read sparknotes and suddenly “get it” when before they were too dense to comprehend it. It’s just an ode about a piece of pottery, why write more about it now?
Remember that not all criticism is good criticism.
Talking about complicated things with other people is fulfilling. Why do people talk about what happened in a football game? Any idiot can see the game. But through discussion, we find a fuller, more complete, more sophisticated picture.
It occurs to me that the best way to answer the OP is to provide one or more examples of really good literary criticism, examples that really do help us more deeply undertstand and appreciate the works they criticize. Anybody got any suggestions?
I’ve seen criticism that points out flaws in the works they’re discussing (e.g., Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses) and can think of a few college lectures that gave me a better understanding of what the author was doing (e.g., a professor’s comments on Invisible Man, which showed a lot of things I had missed).
A good bit of literary criticism can take a poem and point out things that aren’t obvious when reading it cold. These can be literary allusions, or references to the author’s personal life, or particular rhymes or rhythms that enhance to the poem’s meaning.
Sparknotes is not a good example; they do unsophisticated criticism for high school age students (who might miss the obvious). More serious criticism can be very useful, but, like anything else, there is good criticism and bad.
I often tell people that the most important thing I learned in college was how to read. I was a voracious reader before college, but the large number of literature courses that I took in college brought my understanding to a whole new level. There were any number of books (Moby Dick, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, The Great Gatsby) that I had read before, either on my own or as part of a high school class, that took on a whole new meaning and richness for me after I had studied them in college with a deeper level insight into their context and meaning. My favorite example is Tess – I hated it in high school, and never felt that I really understood it at all. In college I still didn’t like it, but I understood it well enough to appreciate it and to go on to become obsessed with reading all of Thomas Hardy.
Before college and my exposure to literary criticism, I always enjoyed reading and felt that I was getting a lot out of the books I read. But once I had seriously studied literature, it was like my understanding and appreciation expanded exponentially. It’s hard to cite a specific example of a criticism that brought a work to life for me, I just know that all of my subsequent reading has been vastly enriched by learning how to read beyond the specific content of a book.
So much literary criticism is crap, I almost voted no, but it does show you how you can look deeper into literature, and of course, it is the vehicle by which English professors and critical theorists differentiate themselves.
Martin Gardner’s “The Annotated Alice” is probably the most immediate example of really good criticism. The book is enjoyable as a story, but you can appreciate it on a much deeper level after reading Gardner’s notes.
I do, in fact, lean towards agreement with Sassyfras. I find most literary criticism to be a waste of time and in some cases it can even decrease enjoyment of the word in question. But these three examples are brilliant.
I especially like literary criticism that provides background information on the author and the place and times he lived in. Or that comments on the structure of the story, language use, or the comparison of themes in different works. I’d really like to read something about the use of hope in Going Postal.
And complaining about SparkNotes stating the obvious missing the obvious thing about SparkNotes. Dispite what it may claim, it’s intended for people who aren’t going to read the poem or book in question. They’ve been assigned a report to write and they’re reading SparkNotes instead.
Not by a strict definition literary, but I’ve enjoyed most of the annotated information and literary criticisms of Tolkien’s work.
The “silly elvish poems” or strange names and languages are a lot more interesting and fascinating when you know how much effort and linguistic skill went into presenting the illusion of different cultures through time.
I still don’t really like the poems and songs, but I can appreciate them more for the workmanship, even if I don’t appreciate the art style.
That said, SparkNotes and Cliff’s Notes are not my idea of actual literary criticism - they’re shorthand infodumps for high schoolers (and perhaps some undergrads) who either didn’t read the text in the first place, or didn’t care enough to pay attention to it.
(One exception - a friend of mine who is French and came over in high school said that SparkNotes were the best resource for explaining the basics of all the cultural and literary background she was supposed to be getting from a text. Everything else was a little too “meta” and she simply wanted to be sure of what she was reading, and have it put into a basic cultural sense. So, there is that.)
Sparknotes are not serious literary criticism, sparknotes are cheat sheets for high school students. The reason the things they say are obvious to anyone who has read the work is that they are aimed at an audience who hasn’t, but wants to seem as though they had.
ETA: Sorry I only read the Sparknotes version of the thread which didn’t mention Lasciel’s last post.
I do think literary criticism has gotten out of hand in some ways - in grad school I feel like we read more papers about books than actual books. But it’s interesting to read different interpretations of a single text - one of my favorite examples of literary criticism is The Madwoman in the Attic - their chapter comparing Frankenstein to Paradise Lost was fascinating and something I never would have seen on my own.
I think Manda JO nailed it in the first response. We do this with all sorts of things in society (Does the election of Barack Obama signal a post-racial world?), whether it be movies (Which half of Full Metal Jacket do you like more, the side the glamorizes war or the side that deconstructs it? Why?) or TV (What’s your take on the final ending of The Sopranos or LOST?) or sports (Should they have gone for it on fourth and goal with that much time left on the clock?).
I don’t necessarily buy into books taking more mental faculties to ingest. There are multiple criticisms of many well-known books, and sometimes people get exposed to an odd one or one they clearly don’t/can’t/fail to see, then write the rest of literary criticism off as well.
Literary criticism is a little more in depth version of a book club, except it’s a paper version and it’s you only hearing about the writer of that paper’s viewpoint of that particular work.
It is wonderful irony to replace the words “science fiction” with “literary criticism” but it works perfectly.
Literary criticism is not a thing, anymore than science fiction is a thing. Both include hundreds of thousands of individual examples over centuries of time, written for every possible purpose under the sun. Beats me how anyone can say anything about the whole.
Literary criticism exists because people love literature. You talk about the subjects that mean most to you, the ones you invest the most time in, the ones that obsess your mind so that you have to make your thoughts known. Good literary criticism comes from the people who are the most knowledgeable about their subject, who have thought most deeply about it, who have the depth and width of experience to put an individual piece in context and perspective. As with any other subject under the sun, the words of the most knowledgeable experts are a pleasure because they deepen your understanding of and connection to that subject.
And there’s also bad literary criticism. To which I say, so what? Ninety percent of everything is crud.*
There’s been a long-standing debate over whether Sturgeon originally said “Ninety percent of everything is crap” and then bowlerized it for print. I once got the chance to ask him the question directly and he said no.
What’s the point of reading if you’re not going to analyze it?
I’m serious. I don’t find any pleasure in television, movies, or books without analysis. It’s not just figuring out what that one piece is “about” or what the “themes” are. It’s about how the human condition is experienced, conveyed, and interpreted. It’s about the conscious decisions that drive a work, and the unconscious ones, and our own perceptions, baggage, and fears. It’s about solving a mystery. What does Sherlock Holmes do if not analyze texts? No, he doesn’t read literature for clues, but we’re surrounded by texts (I know, a very postmodern view of the world). Why do people study the Bible? Why is there a religion? Why does anybody bother to discuss music? Why do people dissect football games? Because it’s meaning, and that’s what the human brain is programmed to find. Patterns and a purpose to this whole ridiculous existence. It’s a conversation between creator, text, and reader, and who doesn’t enjoy an interesting conversation?