Reading Literary Works

We discuss the following topics on this page:

• Reading Literary Works
• Beginning Your Reading
• Analysis
• Explication
• Comparison and Contrast
• Reading with and against the Grain

We also provide the following activity:

• Reading Literary Works [Refresher]

Reading Literary Works

Research into literature requires us to put more energy and attention into reading than we normally do for activities such as light reading or reading for enjoyment. Basically, we want to get a very good sense of what the literary work is before we start formally interpreting or critiquing it. Scholars know that before they can produce an interpretation or critique, they must first construct a conceptual “model” of the literary work. They pay attention to various features of literature such as narrative structure, character development, diction, time, space, and many other features. Only when a conceptual model of the literary work is somewhat in hand can we really begin the interpretation or critique. Researchers read literary works multiple times using a variety of reading strategies:

A key form of reading in literary studies is interrogatory, which means asking questions of the text as you read. It may seem odd to put questions to a written text since, as Socrates once said, it “always gives one unvarying answer.” Yet, asking questions of a text makes some sense because reading can be like a dialogue in which the reader brings important things to the interaction. All writing contains “gaps” that require us to fill in what’s missing. Charles Dickens begins his novel A Tale of Two Cities with the words, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times . . . ” A reader might ask, “how can something be both the best and the worst when those words mean opposite things?” We then look for additional evidence in the text as well as in our own experiences, to help answer the question. For instance, maybe high school graduation comes to mind as a “best of times, worst of times”; it is a time to celebrate an achievement, but also a time when key friendships might come to an end. Graduation can produce a sense of freedom and a sense of terrible uncertainty. We can read Dickens with our understanding of high school graduation in mind, but we should also consider that Dickens’ text may be suggesting something quite different. Re-reading a text might bring us different answers if we have changed our framework for understanding.

Beginning Your Reading

Your instructor may require a research project about a specific literary work, a body of work by a single author or authors, a comparative study of multiple literary works, or may leave the choice to you. To complete a successful literary research project, you will need to know how to read literature the way a researcher does. Reading for pleasure is good, but is not sufficient (because literary research goes beyond stating that you enjoyed – or didn’t enjoy – a text). Your goal is to understand a text. Understanding a text does not require you to like the text, agree with the text, or identify with the text. Some literary works, like Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “Notes from Underground,” may be quite unpleasant to read. But we need to understand what a text is, what it does, and what it is telling us. To answer these questions, you should note the following:

In literary studies, we do not grant authors the final word over what a piece of literature is, means, or does because authors may not be fully aware of their own assumptions, blind spots, cultural conditioning, and so on. Also, authors, like everyone else, may forget, distort, omit, and misrepresent their own work. Their comments on their work are important though, and we shouldn’t ignore them. Our goal as literary researchers is to capture and represent the intentions of a text, whether the author is aware of them or not. For instance, JK Rowling has disparaged transgendered people, but many readers of the Harry Potter series find that the text affirms transgender identities.

Analysis

Literary critics practice various kinds of reading but one of the most important is analysis. Analysis involves selecting a passage of the text for a “close reading,” examining the details and nuances of the text to see how they fit together and achieve their effects. Generally, you will do a close reading on only a portion of a text, but it is possible to do a close reading of an entire text, especially if it is very brief. In general, you should do an analysis of at least one passage from a literary text in your research project.

Below is analytical close reading of a short poem. Poetry has many things going on at once: metaphor, theme, subject, form, elements, means, images, diction, syntax, alliteration and assonance, rhyme, meter, tone, genre, paradox, etc. Poetry also makes use of narrative and argument. All of these elements are important, but usually the metaphorical structure of poetry is critically important. Poetic metaphor is not as much about people and/or things as it is about the relationships between people and/or things. We make sense of relationships by comparing them to other relationships.

Let’s analyze a poem from the 9th century. We will see how complicated the central metaphor is.

How to make sense of it? We first need to fill in the metaphorical algebra: A is to B as C is to D, or He (A) is to Me (B) as the Seaweed Gatherer (C) is to the Swaying Kelp (D). To understand the relationship between the speaker and the “he” of the poem, we first have to figure out the relationship of the seaweed gatherer to the swaying kelp. The most obvious thing about this relationship is that swaying kelp is passive while the seaweed gatherer is active. The kelp (which is a form of seaweed commonly used in Japanese cuisine) can’t fight back or escape. It just sways in the surf and the seaweed gatherer can take it if he likes. The speaker seems to be saying that she is passive while he is active. Presumably, this means he can gather what he wants from her (which could be love, money, or sex) without her having any means to stop him.

People and seaweed differ in many other ways that are either less relevant or not relevant here. Seaweed is a plant while people are animals. People have legs and seaweed does not. There are probably millions of differences between people and seaweed, and many similarities too. For the sake of our reading of the poem, however, these similarities and differences are less relevant than the qualities active and passive.

But we have to change our view of the relationship between the man and the woman in the poem when we attend to the word “not.” The speaker says she is not like the swaying kelp. Her negation of the metaphor using the word “not” means we have to switch her position from passive to active, since being able to say no would make her different from the swaying kelp. In other words, she seems to be saying that she can stop him from taking what he wants from her.

But the structure of the poem makes us change our reading of the metaphor again. The speaker of the poem does not address the man directly (with “Don’t you realize . . . “), but addresses a third person. If she were truly able or willing to say “no” – to be active – she would tell the man directly, “I am not like the swaying kelp.” By asking, “doesn’t he realize?” she implies that he doesn’t realize. In the man’s mind, he is the seaweed gatherer and she is the swaying kelp and she won’t do anything to change the relationship. She will only complain to a third person, who might be herself, a friend, or you, the reader, about how she wishes she were active.

The poem is relatable because many people have been through times when they wish they could say “no” but don’t. We rehearse what we might say, knowing that we likely won’t say it to the right person at the right time. “Doesn’t he realize” does not authorize complacency. Rather, it draws our attention to the ways in which we try to convince ourselves we are standing up for ourselves without actually doing so.

Your research project should include analysis of at least one portion of a text.

Explication

Explication expands our understanding of a text, elaborating on what the text gives us. It makes explicit that which is implied by a text. Explication means looking at the whole of a literary work as greater than the sum of its parts. “Parts” can refer to different characters, plot elements, themes, or other features of a literary text. For instance, we might read “Sonny’s Blues” in terms of the relationship between language and music as different forms of communication. The narrator, Sonny’s brother, tries to communicate with Sonny through language but repeatedly fails. Though he is extremely articulate, he can’t reach his brother. Only at the end does he realize that communication goes two ways and he has not really listened to his brother. His brother communicates through music more than through language. The story is more than just a story of two brothers, more, even, than a story about music. Here is the second-to-last paragraph in which the narrator finally hears and understands his brother through his music.

The narrator comes to a better understanding of his brother – and even himself – through music rather than through language. Something kind of magic happens in this paragraph as well. Paradoxically, the narrator is able to transform Sonny’s music into language and to share it with us, his readers. Thus, the text shows us that the gulf between language and music, just like the gulf between the narrator and his brother, is bridgeable. Here the text summarizes a lot of the materials we learned from earlier in the story, but puts them in context with Sonny’s music. Typically, analysis and explication work together, with analysis going closer into the details and explication moving out to show us the bigger picture.

Your research project should include an explication that builds on some close reading analysis.

Comparison and Contrast

Sometimes, a literary work comes into better focus when we read it alongside another work. The other work may be by the same author, or by a contemporary author of a similar genre or from another culture, etc. The point is that we don’t really understand a literary work in a vacuum, but instead, we read it in relation to other works. In your research, you should decide whether it is necessary or valuable to compare and contrast your chosen work with another.

Below is a comparison and contrast between a Biblical parable and a modern parable.

Both Jesus’ and Kafka’s parables are about gateways. Jesus’s parable is about the gateway separating foolishness from wisdom. Kafka’s parable is about the gateway separating injustice from justice. In The Trial, Joseph K. has been accused of a crime, though the details of the supposed crime are never explained. Joseph K. is told that to be accused is also to be condemned (his guilt is already certain), but that he should review his life to understand what he might have done wrong. He seeks access to legal officials to whom he can plead his case. Here a priest, who is an employee of the court, introduces himself to Joseph K. and tells him this parable. Following the parable, Kafka provides a discussion between Joseph K. and the priest about its proper interpretation, just as Jesus and his disciples discuss the proper interpretation of the “Sower of Seeds” parable.

Each part of Jesus’s parable has a single meaning that links elements of horticulture to spiritual teachings. By contrast, in Kafka’s parable, the priest and Joseph K. discuss numerous possible interpretations of the parable. Unlike Jesus, the priest who presents “Before the Law” did not create the parable, and he is not an ultimate authority on its meaning. In fact, it’s unclear if there is any ultimate authority on its proper interpretation.

By contrast, Jesus’s parable offers a clear way to cross the gateway to wisdom, though it is highly contingent. If a man is given the seed (the divine word) and it lands in fertile soil (a receptive soul) it can grow and he can harvest the fruit (wisdom). Wisdom is contingent because certain people may not want wisdom or may have souls that are not prepared for it or may be in an environment not conducive to it. Jesus even says that he doesn’t want everyone to understand his message: “To you are given the secrets of the Kingdom of God; but to those who are outside all comes through parables, so that they may have sight but not see, and hear but not understand, lest they be converted and forgiven.” The Kafka parable also shows us a gateway ― to justice ― but it is quite unclear whether it can be crossed at all or what justice will be on the other side. It is unclear whether the parable is meant for one person, for some people, or for everyone.

Jesus compares something difficult to understand (how to spread wisdom) to something well-understood (that plants grow from seeds). The complicating factor in Jesus’ parable is that he presents different kinds of people with different kinds of souls to explain why wisdom grows in some but not in others. Kafka’s parable is less straightforward because he is comparing something difficult to understand (access to justice) to something that is strange and only partially known – a guard at a door meant only for one person. We understand the parable as being relevant to Joseph K., who belongs to a category (the accused), but why is he in that category? What is beyond the door? What other choices did the petitioner have?

A major difference between the two parables is that Jesus limits interpretation while Kafka invites us to consider multiple interpretations and to continually speculate about what is unknown (and perhaps even unknowable).

Reading with and against the Grain

In their textbook, Ways of Reading, David Bartholomae and Anthonly Petrosky.^[1] discuss the differences between reading “with” and “against” the grain. The analogy here is to woodworking. Wood has fibers that align more in one direction than in another. If you cut the wood with the grain you tend to get a smooth surface, but if you cut it against the grain you tend to get splinters and a rough surface. To read a text with the grain is to follow the overt intentions of the author, the text, and the culture in which the text was produced. To read against the grain means to ask questions that push against the overt intentions of the author, text, and culture in which the text was produced. Another way of framing the difference between reading with and against the grain is to think of dominant and resistant readings.

Sometimes reading against the grain can appear hostile towards the author, text, or culture. Other times it just moves in a different direction than the intended one; we can read a text against the grain by reading it for our own purposes and not for its intended message. For instance, it is possible to read a bank statement as a poem, a recipe as a historical document, and a personal letter as a literary work. Doing so is neither friendly nor hostile to the intended meaning; it is indifferent to it. This approach is called “creative misreading” and also “repurposing.” For instance, the French New Wave critics and filmmakers of the 1950s creatively misread American B movies (usually cheaply made gangster films) – which had been considered disposable trash – as high art. The act of placing a text in a new context is sufficient to produce such a creative misreading. Putting a movie poster in an art museum leads us to read the poster in a different way: not as an advertisement for a film but as a work of art in its own right. Shakespeare was considered mass entertainment and was performed across the United States in Vaudeville shows. When Vaudeville was eclipsed by movies, Shakespeare was repurposed as high art.

As we read literary texts, we should practice reading with and against the grain. When reading against the grain, we should practice reading both to resist and to repurpose.

Reading Literary Works [Refresher]

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