I, like many other people, have been more than a little dismayed when I have read poems or other literary works that I did not have the slightest notion as to what it actually meant. Even without a concrete understanding of the work’s meaning, I could still gain some knowledge as to the overall idea or purpose of the work just from an initial reading. Literature has the capacity to communicate before it is understood, as it is certainly possible for a work to convey emotion and feeling without the reader fully comprehending the complete meaning of a work.
Emotion can tell you more about a piece of literature than factual knowledge. Within the first few lines of a poem, you should be able to feel whatever sensation the author wants you to; fear for a lost child, heartbreak over an ended love, or joy at a victory. Completely understanding the theme of a work is not imperative to comprehending the plot. Literature can communicate through emotion and not concrete knowledge, yet it is communicating nonetheless.
Every so often, the leading impression a reader gets is the most accurate and helps them to develop the best mental image when reading a piece of literature. Our first reading of a work, when, so to speak, we are all eyes and ears (and the mind is highly receptive rather than sifting for evidence), is sometimes the most important reading” (Barnet, Cain, and Burto. 102). Whether or not the reader fully comprehends what the author is expressing in the writing is irrelevant; the initial impression will unequivocally define the tone or mood of the poem for them. In Andrew Marvell’s poem ‘To His Coy Mistress,’ I assumed at first that it was the author retelling some of the sweet things he had said to the woman he loved. When I read it a second time I tried to look at it in a more analytical light.
I concluded that he what he was actually saying was that if they had all the time in the world, he would wait as long as she wanted, but alas, they did not. I also perceived that he was trying to convince her to sleep with him while she was still young and attractive, which was not a pleasant revelation. So the first time I read the poem all I saw was poignancy and kindness, but when I looked more closely, the literature communicated sarcasm and lechery. Suppose you, as a student, have read an entire piece of literature and you feel as if you comprehend the meaning and understand what it is communicating.It would be very frustrating to become aware of someone else in your class having an utterly different idea about the meaning of the work. If you talk to your peers or have an in-class discussion, it is very easy for someone else in the group to get an opposite opinion as what the literature is communicating.
It is not that you do not understand the material presented, it is that you took away something different than your peers did. You are not necessarily wrong; you might just have an opinion that is differing from others. Not everyone understands literature the same way.There is also the scenario in which you have formulated an opinion on what you read, and upon hearing a differing opinion, your whole view of the literature changes because you’ve realized something you didn’t quite understand before, or you have a sort of revelation of understanding. Some forms of literature such as poetry often use aesthetics and elaborate wording to deliver their point in a more emotional manner; this sometimes intimidates readers and causes them to overthink simple meanings, while under thinking complex ideas.
What the sentence is, we might say, is no less significant than what the sentence says” (BCB 102). This means that when the reader looks over a literary work for the first time, he/she may not grasp all of the double meanings or understand the delicate phrasing, yet they can still comprehend the general concept of the work. In William Shakespeare’s ‘Sonnet 130,’ he compares the woman he loves to several things- the sun, snow, roses; at first, I thought he was praising his lover’s outward beauty.Upon re-reading the sonnet, I came to realize that he was making the comparisons of the woman unfavorably and was essentially calling her ugly, but special nonetheless, and the purpose of the sonnet was actually to poke fun at other poets’ sentimental tributes. This was a very clever way to get people to realize that the women in the poetry of the time were romanticized and highly unrealistic; real women were generally much more intriguing than their fictitious counterparts were. A cursory reading of a literary work may be all that is necessary for the reader to begin making connections without them being conscious of it.
Experience proves that we can feel the effects of a work without yet understanding how the effects are achieved” (BCB 102). For example, when I first read ‘Holy Sonnet XIV’ by John Donne, I had no idea that God was the one supposedly ravishing Donne in order for him to be chaste. I didn’t really understand the paradox of how God was supposed to ravish him or in what way this was supposed to make the author chaste, yet I still understood that the poem was about God somehow changing this man’s heart and opening it so that the man could be a better servant to him.So it wasn’t necessary for me to comprehend all of the minor details in the poem to get the gist of the theme. Literature, by definition, is defined by the “excellence of the writing…originality and general aesthetic and artistic merits” and must be “well above the ordinary run of written works” (J.
A. Cuddon, Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, 3rd ed. , London: Penguin, 1991, 505. Emphasis added). Therefore, literature is not Seventeen Magazine, a birthday card from my grandmother, or even Martin Luther King Jr.
s “I Have a Dream” speech. Seventeen Magazine and my birthday card do not belong to any of the major genres (drama, lyric, epic, etc. ) and they do not possess the “superior qualities” that are expected of works of literature. They are also lacking in the quality of the writing and in artistic merits. Most non-fiction writings are denied literary status, as originality is an important factor of literature, and a lot of non-fiction consists of biographies and real-life events that can’t really be classified as “original.
However, it can be argued that ‘literature’ is merely honorific and is a term of respect that has no real-world value; it is only given to works that are well known for their value amongst a discerning community. But it seem that one consensual idea that is vital to so-called literature, as well as every other scrap of writing out there, is that there needs to be communication of some sort happening. Although the reader may not immediately interpret a literary work in the way the author intended, or they don’t comprehend the meaning entirely, there is still emotion and shape communicated through the text.When there are double-meanings in a text that the reader doesn’t notice at first, the main idea of the work will still be conveyed; if the reader understands the idea of the work but not quite how it came to be that way, the literature still communicates the general concept.
It is quite possible to understand the mood and plot of literature without really grasping the deeper meaning behind it. After all, if literature is classified by the excellence of the wording and the superiority of the writing, shouldn’t it be able to communicate if it wants to?
