/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.6456356]

What is the point of literary criticism and analysis?

This might sound ultra pleb to say, but even after doing it, I just don't get why. What value does it hold. I feel like i'm a reporter, slanting the story to one side of something to make a point, when the author probably didn't mean that at all.

I feel like i'm putting meaning where there really might not be. Symbolism that was left there on purpose is one thing, but I feel like not every phallic object in a book represents a dick. and not every girl that gets rescued has to represent something, or some plight of people, when really the author just wanted to write it that way.

I feel like maybe an author just writes things because he wanted to write them that way, not so we could bend it around to express something

Again, sorry if this seems pleb, I just can't get my head around this.

[Anonymous No.6456380]

>>6456356
bump

[Anonymous No.6456501]

>>6456356
I got you anon. When I think about the importance of literary criticism, I see sand running through someone's fingers. However, I believe that literature gets you back in touch with reality, or presents you points of view that you might have never got to know otherwise.

That's how I fight back. It might seem irrelevant to study theory and analize a text. But in the end, both help you get closer to life itself. Then we're no longer strangers to ourselves and to the universe.

[Anonymous No.6456512]

Learning and practicing skills which in higher levels is used to do philosophy, cultural criticism, historical analysis, etc.

[Anonymous No.6456532]

>>6456356
The point of criticism is to make a case for how a work should be read, or to make apparent what was latent in the work.

[Anonymous No.6456551]

>>6456356
people need to eat

[Anonymous No.6458548]

bump

[Anonymous No.6458748]

This passage by Stirner is probably the ultimate answer to any question of "why" that involves humans.

"

I sing as the bird sings

That on the bough alights;

The song that from me springs

Is pay that well requites.

I sing because — I am a singer. But I use you for it because I — need ears.

Where the world comes in my way — and it comes in my way everywhere — I consume it to quiet the hunger of my egoism. For me you are nothing but —my food, even as I too am fed upon and turned to use by you. We have only one relation to each other, that of usableness, of utility, of use. We owe each other nothing, for what I seem to owe you I owe at most to myself. If I show you a cheery air in order to cheer you likewise, then your cheeriness is of consequence to me, and my air serves my wish; to a thousand others, whom I do not aim to cheer, I do not show it. "

[Anonymous No.6459164]

>>6456356
>I feel like maybe an author just writes things because he wanted to write them that way, not so we could bend it around to express something
with all of the 'death of the author' shitposting going on lately, why are people still struggling with this?

One doesn't analyse a text to reveal authorial intent, but to reveal one or a few of the multiplicity of meanings which can be extracted from a text. A book is literally always an 'open book', meaning is not stationary, there is nothing outside of the text

[Anonymous No.6459172]

>>6456356
>not every phallic object in a book represents a dick

they are just inherently phallic, authors fault for not being careful enough if thats what he didnt want to portray. most of western society is phallic nonsense.

[Anonymous No.6459491]

>>6459172
Having a shape doesnt mean it represents a cock. Holy fuck how can you be that dense?

Example, men holding spears.

obviously these mean cocks right?

no theyre just fucking spears. The shape is formed via aerodynamics, and its ability to pierce, not 'heh lets just make it look like our dicks xDDD'

I can't believe a share a major with retards that actually believe this shit

[Anonymous No.6459511]

>>6459164
How do you know which ones are bullshit and which ones aren't? This seems horrendously vague and impossible to really form an objective conclusion. Just speculation on meaning
It feels like an exercise on how a story would be interpreted by someone whos undergone trauma, or mental illness, or something similar, making all kinds of connections but I feel it doesn't go beyond this. It stays an exercise because most of us don't have these handicaps.

Seeing a text through a different(cultural) lens doesn't really reveal anything of value. Just what could have been, or how we project our own feelings onto something. Its just too subjective to take seriously.

[Anonymous No.6459657]

>>6456551
Good point.