/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.605897]

Does /lit/ ever sit in English class in the midst of an analysis and say to themselves "This is bullshit. I didn't get that at all from the text.", or that the professor is full of shit?

[Anonymous No.605902]

Sometimes. Most of the time, I can see where the analysis is coming from and where the prof. is going, but sometimes it's just bullshit.
Like in high school, we spent an hour analyzing the opening thing to Romeo and Juliet.

[Anonymous No.605909]

Yes.

I hate over analysis

I also hate intentional weak symbolism

'Holdins hat is on backward and he is catching children from going over a cliff. Lets spend 4 classes analyzing this.'

[Anonymous No.605915]

Do you ever wonder why psychoanalysis is used when analyzing text? If it's a bogus style of psych, then why is it applied to literature at all?

[Anonymous No.605919]

>>605909
I get the catching children part. Not the hat thing.

[Anonymous No.605922]

>>605915
So professors and undergrads can write papers about how anything with a hole is really a symbol for a vagina.

[Anonymous No.605926]

Only time that happened was in this one introduction to critical theory class. Lol, psychoanalysis.

I did get an A+ on my paper on the fear of vaginas in Vertigo, though.

>>605909

I don't think you can wear these backwards

[Anonymous No.605928]

I always thought that. It took me a few years after highschool to give 'classic' literature another chance.

[Anonymous No.605932]

>>605909

This. I feel like professors don't believe in over analysis. They call it close reading. Also, it's like as long as you can back up your claim, even if it's weak, you're not wrong. Sometimes I can't stand my major for those reasons.

[Anonymous No.605934]

>>605919
>>605926

In the 1950s baseball catchers didn't where helmets under their masks. They just wore their baseball hats backwards.

[Anonymous No.605938]

>>605934
Oh.
Well then.

[Anonymous No.605956]

>>605934

What about drawing out an issue that could be simplified with a paragraph, like women in Shakespeare? Every paper is about the same thing- how women were objects and had limited freedoms.

[Anonymous No.605964]

High school english was full of bullshit like HURR LOOK FOR SYMBOLISM.

People who teach that way should be shot; they're ruining countless potential writers.

Writing's not about symbolism, never has been, never will be.

[Anonymous No.605970]

>>605932
English professors and teachers, much like editors and agents, and more or less anyone in writing-related business who aren't actually writers, are usually people who wanted to be writers but couldn't do it. Maybe it was too hard for them, maybe they sucked, maybe they were symbolismfags, who knows, but either way, they're the rejects of the writing world.

[Anonymous No.605971]

>>605964
It is for some authors/styles.
Don't take the student's dislike of analysis all the way around to the other extreme.

[Anonymous No.605995]

>>605971
>It is for some authors/styles.
Brotip: if you intentionally shove symbolism into your book, you're doing it wrong. It's usually the mark of a bad author, and even when a good one does it, it never contributes positively to the work. Note that I'm referring specifically to symbolism meant for the readers, not for contents of the book that symbolize something to one (or more) of the characters themselves. That's perfectly fine.

[Anonymous No.606000]

>>605915
because while it is bull in terms of how people really act or think, after Freud published his theories, they had a powerful effect the literate world, meaning that a lot of stuff since is riddled with allusions to his work.

That said, some of his stuff is plausible, and so the less plausible stuff gets tucked in on the side.

[Anonymous No.606006]

>>605995

>Brotip: if you intentionally shove symbolism into your book, you're doing it wrong.

I'd like to introduce you to the entire Western canon, I'm sure they'd all love to know your deep and insightful thoughts on how they're doing it wrong

[Anonymous No.606009]

>>606006
Yeah, figures that someone like you would think that's a good counter-example.

[Anonymous No.606013]

>>606009
Unless I'm misunderstanding the motivations of nearly all Christianity-influenced authors of the West, I'd say it's a pretty good comparison.

[Anonymous No.606014]

The only reason Melville made the whale white was to distinguish it from other whales.

[Anonymous No.606019]

>>606014
Sounds good to me

[Anonymous No.606020]

>>606009

There's nothing wrong with symbolism, it's a great way of communicating a lot in a small space.

Perhaps it's too deep for you.

[Anonymous No.606023]

>"This is bullshit. I didn't get that at all from the text."

Me. We were reading "Passage to India." There was a part where a bunch of fuck heads crash their rowboat into another rowboat full of fuckheads. They all fall into the water and then they get sucked into a whirlpool and start spinning around.

Teacher: "See? The author is illustrating English and Indian cultures blending together."
Me: "Duuuuuuuuuurp."

Fuck Passage to India.

[Anonymous No.606024]

all the time.

We had a new-age prof who saw visions of christ in EVERYTHING.


really frustrating

[Anonymous No.606026]

>>606024
I think that professor was Jesus

[Anonymous No.606032]

>>606000
What about when people apply it to Renaissance literature?

[Anonymous No.606036]

>>606024
for instance, "Greasy Lake"

>claimed the irrelevant passage where the narrator hides underwater is purposefull allegory for baptism
>It actually just facillitates the plot and shows the narrator stumbling in panic

no.

[Anonymous No.606037]

>>606024

[Anonymous No.606039]

>>606024
Maybe your professor was just a fuckhead. It is so god damn easy to find christ-like figures in literature.

Step 1: is the character good natured?
Step 2: does the character help people?
Step 3: does the character die?
Step 4: does the character die through self sacrifice?

If you said "yes" to at least two of those, you've got a solid idea for a paper!

[Anonymous No.606043]

>>606036
"The Day I sat with Jesus"

>Talks for five minutes minute how the author is trying to say that "God is everything" (no text evidence, BTW)
>Talks for half an hour about his quasi-religious experience that made him realize god is everywhere

wat. He was a good Creative writing prof, too.

[Anonymous No.606047]

>>606014
>>606023

[Anonymous No.606048]

I actually asked my English teacher about this back in high school during class, asking if what we were reading was meant to be analyzed so exhaustively (we were reading The Grapes of Wrath and she wouldn't shut up about the turtle crossing the road). She bitched me out in front of the class. Good times.

[Anonymous No.606052]

lol @ people who can't find a happy medium between not getting it and over-analyzing so much that it's stupid

[Anonymous No.606057]

>Good authors will intentionally put symbolism in their work, because they expect their audience to be smart enough to pick up on it.
>Not all of that symbolism is intentional.
>"Unintentional symbolism" is still worth rooting out of literature, it's what Carl Jung would have wanted.

[Anonymous No.606061]

>>606052

Go back to bed, professor.

[Anonymous No.606063]

>>605995

If Hemingway wasn't purposfully putting symbolism in his stories he was just and awful awful writer.

[Anonymous No.606086]

>>606048
For some authors you really do need to analyze it. East of Eden, for instance, is TOTALLY about Cain and Abel, and how this conflict is playing itself out again.

Others don't need it, like Hemmingway. I paraphrase, but he said something along the lines of, "You guys figure all of that out, I just write this stuff."

[Anonymous No.606099]

>>606086
>East of Eden
>about Cain and Abel
You do not need to analyze that to figure it out.

[Anonymous No.606115]

>>606063
No good book has ever been written that has in it symbols arrived at beforehand and stuck in.
- Ernest Hemingway

[Anonymous No.606221]

>>606057

this, you fucking faggots

[Anonymous No.606223]

>>606115

> arrived at beforehand

[Anonymous No.606256]

I thought most /lit/erates didn't go to school...

[Anonymous No.606266]

ITT: People who are only now realising that it's a bullshit subject to study

[Anonymous No.606268]

>>605995

You must hate Russian literature...

[Anonymous No.606270]

>>606099

"...so Cain went out from the LORD's presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden."

-Genesis 4:16