/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.2047447]

I always hear people complain about how studying a certain piece of literature in a classroom ruined it for them. Can we have a thread where people talk about the opposite?

Are there any pieces of literature that you only liked because of what you learned when you studied it?

Pic related. Didn't really like it when I read it on my own, but after studying the historical context, the critical history, and discussing things like the role of women, the symbolism present, and the binary oppositions in the novella, I found it to be a really fascinating work.

[Anonymous No.2047448]

Macbeth.

I had such a great teacher whose enthusiasm for the play was infectious.

[Fauve !!FWH1V1k3dzn No.2047450]

1984. I don't know, I guess it's what first made me interested in literature.

I'm tempted to read Heart Of Darkness.

[Anonymous No.2047452]

I had an amazing teacher who made studying this book in depth really interesting. There were things I would never have detected.

Thank you, Mr Micham.

[Anonymous No.2047453]

>>2047452
Forgot image.

[Anonymous No.2047478]

Othello.
Maybe I would have loved it either way though

[Anonymous No.2047502]

Reading Shakespeare (Macbeth, Hamlet, Henry pt. I) in school made it a lot more interesting. I might not have had the patience to look at all the puns and details if I'd been reading on my own.

[Caracalla !!S1oOkTjvsv2 No.2047505]

The Canterbury Tales, Chekhov's The Seagull, Larkin and Dickinson's poetry, tragicomic Shakespeare (along Measure for Measure lines).

>>2047447
I hate this novel, mostly because I hate Conrad's political perspective, but moreover because he sacrificed his narrative's not inconsiderable potential for some hamfisted and blinkered anti-humanist 'moral.'

[Anonymous No.2047506]

>>2047447
I read Heart of Darkness on my own and I fucking loved it. I fucking loved the imagery used by the author, I loved his portrayal of the human condition. I noticed some binary oppositions, but I didn't take note of shit about women.

Also, Conrad is a fucking good author in my book, I started reading his "the secret agent" and it's good too.

[Anonymous No.2047507]

>>2047505
Please explain his political perspective and anti-humanist views. I'm genuinely curious.

[Caracalla !!S1oOkTjvsv2 No.2047525]

>>2047507
The political perspective is a little more prevalent in 'Nostromo,' where basically we have this typically bigoted colonialist view of the subaltern as someone incapable of adapting and reforming himself to a civilised modernity that he is supposedly morally obliged to respect. It almost approaches racism there, but less so, in Heart of Darkness, where there is some real sympathy for the black characters and their suffering under harsh colonial conditions. Nonetheless, the thread still remains with this direct correlation between Kurtz's tribesman and this 'morally wrong' primitiveness, as well as, of course, the association between primitiveness and some sort of 'evil' or 'darkness.'

The anti-humanist message is less ethically wrong, but I have always felt it a responsibility of an author to believe in and not disparage his fellow man with some sort of heavy-handed preaching along the lines of 'man is originally base, and can rarely escape this nature.' Fine, the point of Heart of Darkness is that this nature can be redeemed through civilisation but has this line of argument any strength now were all post-modern and depressive? I guess the anti-humanism isn't as criminal as it is in the film-making of Kubrick and the writing of Cormac McCarthy but it still left a sour taste in my mouth.

[Anonymous No.2047596]

The Great Gatsby

[Anonymous No.2047708]

the catcher in the rye and I thought The great Gatsby was a good book prior to reading it, but it was even better when I went over it in class

[Anonymous No.2048235]

I studied Lord of the Flies once, but I'd definitely enjoy it if I read it again.