Hey, I totally understand. Old work is hard to understand because of outdated language. As well, someone might give a long lecture on how they interpret a text. But as long as you back up your interpretation with lines from the book, your interpretation can be very very different. As a writer I sometimes see people go really deep into my work. This honestly makes me so happy to see someone interpret things at such a deep level. But not all details I insert are intentional. Not every flower is a symbol. Consequently some people interpret everything as a deeper symbol and that can be overwhelming and is usually untrue.

Therefore, readers miss key information and symbols authors put in their work but readers interpret symbols the writers did not intentionally put in. This can be fun but becomes a bit too much if the reader interprets every line and every word as something greater.

r/classicbookclub might interest you.

There is a book How to Read Literature Like a Professor

Keep watching lectures and reading

I think that OP is doing well and demonstrates a cognitive error that most of us have because of modern society- we believe that some people are intrinsically masters of a skill, instead of those skills being the product of years of learning.

Professor Barbara Oakley is the instructor of the incredibly popular coursera MOOC “Learning How to Learn” that does a great job of explaining the neuroscience of learning, and she emphasizes that many people (including her) were unreasonably discouraged from learning because of these false social beliefs that learning should be easy.

OP, think of riding a bicycle. (after you fell of that bike for the 20th time, did you say to yourself “i’m just no good at this, other people can ride without even holding the handlebars?” no, most of us just keep going and get better at our own pace, and our lives are richer for that new skill. it’s the same with your pursuit of literature.

i also think that skills you gain in critical thinking and composing your thoughts in the written word will make you a better human being, and hopefully help you in whatever career you choose.

I didn’t study literature, but I studied languages at uni and visual arts with a specialisation in photography at college.

It often makes me laugh when I see literature/art critics pointing out these elaborate hidden meanings in words and photos. I once had a class where an art critic who had no experience with taking photos herself, did exactly this. Interpreting the reasons why a photographer had done this and that and what it could mean. Giving it her own interpretation. Without knowing the photographer’s intention.

I can’t speak for other photographers, but I can tell you that when I take a photo, it’s just… taking a photo based on an intuitive feeling. Reason has nothing to do with it.

(I díd learn to give my work intellectually sound reasons & explanations. Inventions to impress the art critics and examinators, because it’s what they expect.)

A friend of my uncle was an artist. His work was published in a magazine and given all sorts of complicated, hidden meanings. When my uncle asked him about it, he said: I had some junk on my attic that I wanted to get rid of.

Of course with literature & writing there is more reasoning, more intention involved, but still. I think those literature and art critics are often just intellectuals with little actual creative experience, giving the work their own subjective interpretations.

How could you have known Milton’s meaning without knowing the context of his life, the times and the writings he referenced? It’s literally impossible to know that, unless you’re a scholar specializing in that era. I studied literature, and Milton, but no way I could get much deeper than the surface text without reading a lot of extra materials.

If you want to get into critically analyzing texts, start by reading theory or critical editions. Familiarize yourself with the terms and techniques. The fact that you got a lot out of that professor’s videos, shows you’ll probably be good at and enjoy critical reading.