I've started watching/listening to a YouTube video series put on by two English Lit professors, Dr Philip Chase and Dr A P Canavan, with the purpose of teaching readers, and perhaps authors, how to appreciate stories in a college English Lit class way. The series is ongoing, alternating between their two YouTube fantasy-focused channels, with three episodes released at the time I'm writing this post. You can view the first introductory episode in the series here.
So what does literary appreciation involve? Well...
"During the series, we will cover various topics, including story versus plot, narrative perspective, characters, setting and world building, symbols, tone and style, and themes. It is our hope that the tools and techniques we discuss will add enjoyment to people’s storytelling journeys."
While I am curious as to what literary appreciation involves, I have no interest in viewing stories in this way for my own enjoyment. I read stories to take me to times and places that I'll never be able to visit, in the company of friends I'll never have. I do not read fiction to learn lessons, ponder deep questions, or solve puzzles which is what literary appreciation seems to be all about. That's just me.
In the second episode they talk of identifying the "narration," which, as I understand it, is technical term for the themes, and subject matter the story may be exploring. While story and plot are often interchangeable terms in general conversation, the academic meaning of "story" is the incidents of the story in chronological order, while the "plot" is the way the author chooses to tell the story. Authors can take their story and slice and dice it as they choose, with the aim of increasing a reader's interest by using flashbacks, multiple points of view, unreliable narrators, and any other technique in order to make a nondescript story into a puzzle to be solved. And who doesn't like puzzles?
Come to think of it, literary appreciation is also a way of turning a story into a puzzle to solve. You can ferret out the reasons why the author wrote the plot the way they did, sniff out all the hidden meanings that they slipped into the story and plot just for eagle eyed readers to discover. In short the literary detective can discover what the author is doing behind the curtain of words they have constructed and in doing so, come to a greater appreciation of the genius of the author.
If you detect, as a literary detective, a little cynicism in my view of literary appreciation, you can be forgiven in wondering why would I then spend my time even learning about literary appreciation? For one reason - I'm taking the course as "The Art of Being a Literary Critic 101," for, as you know, when given the opportunity, I love playing the critic as long as the risk of hurting an author's feelings are extremely unlikely to none. I don't like being mean, but I also don't like what I see as bad or lazy writing. I'm thinking that if I'm going to be a critic, adding a dash of literary appreciation slang to a critical review might increase the authenticity of my criticism. It can't hurt.
The only problem is that I have to read bad books to use it. That sucks.
I had a book years ago called "How to Read Literature Like a Professor." It was interesting, but it might as well have been called "How to Take the Fun Out Of Reading". I'm sure I've picked up a thing or two from it, though mostly when I write reviews, I try to just ramble about whatever strikes my fancy, rather than deliberately looking for themes or symbols.
ReplyDeleteHi Berthold, I read and write stories as stories. However, it seems to me that a lot of readers and writers like to make a puzzle to solve out of a story. Literary appreciation seems to me to be the same thing on a slightly more elevated plain - but in this case I suspect it has more to do with the reader than the writer, since readers can't read the author's mind - only their words and clearly those are open to interpretation. The talks have been interesting in that I'm discovering how complicated everything can be made to be. And it is interesting to see these two professors, one American, and the other Irish? interact in their discussions. I have time on my hands, so I might as well learn something useful or not.
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