This monthly blog hop is hosted at The Blue Bookcase . I know it's close to its deadline but I've just discovered this event and found it so interesting that I made up my mind and joined the discussion. This month's question is...
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
I tend to analyze whatever I read as a professional bias. I studied literature, I teach literature, I analyze or compare the texts I read. However, I hate dissecting literary texts and I don't usually teach literature that way. I still remember the awful sensation of hating a literary work while working on its detailed analysis, so this is just what I avoid doing with my students. They are just teenagers, English (as a foreign language) is compulsory in their curriculum, so they are not specializing students who chose to study English Literature. This is another reason why I avoid proposing them a technical study of literary texts. I'd like to make them love reading novels or poetry and often the first reason why they hate those texts is because they usually study them that way at school.
However, what I do as a reader is inevitably to analyze, not only when I decide to review a book I'm reading on Fly High or My Jane Austen Book Club, but in general, whenever I read and that even when I read fanfiction or chick lit. Because I've read lots of that stuff too, recently. Attempt to escape or to widen my horizons, I actually did it and liked it a lot (mind you, not in any case). My tendency to analyze and compare what I read does not detract my readerly experience, the more I read the more I like doing it. Analyzing increase the pleasure, it doesn't deminish it. You understand more, hence you appreciate or dislike what you read more .What is your personal attitude and experience in reading literary texts? I'd love to hear from you.
