I want to study literature. I’m not an English Literature major or anything related, but I feel a pull to it. I wouldn’t mind dissecting and analyzing a text. So I figured I’d give it a try on my own.

I read about 80% of Paradise Lost and could follow along easily. On a surface level I understood the story. But then I watched a series of lectures from a Yale professor where he deep dives into the nuances of every line and what they meant to Milton on a personal level, along with hidden possible meanings and metaphors. I was left both amazed and feeling like I’m too dumb for this.

So I tried again.

I read the prologue of Beowulf… and there’s a lot I don’t understand. Just in the first few lines, whats a “foundling”? What’s a “whale-road”? I know I can watch videos of people explaining it, but that seems like having the answers just handed to me.

I want to have the skills to read a text and proficiently find an essays worth of insight within it. Maybe I’m just underestimating myself, but I feel like the world has so many highly intelligent, quick-minded people, and I’m sadly and frustratingly not one of them.

  • Disastrous-Ad-2458BEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    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.