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Introduction
- Vanderbilt University Press
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1 Introduction Methodical Reading According to the French poet Jacques Roubaud, every reading of a poem by every reader is a kind of translation. What makes up the poem in the end is the sum of all the readings. The same might be said of the novel. A novel is usually a long work that cannot be read in one stretch; each reader will select different things for attention, and will construct a different path through the text, which constitutes a reading. There is no final right reading for a work like Pride and Prejudice (1813) or Ulysses (1922), only the sum of the readings we have made so far. Why then is it necessary to attempt a methodical reading? Why is it necessary to attempt analysis, or the breaking up of texts into parts? A simple answer is that, if our readings are going to be the basis for written work, and if our aim is to interest and convince other readers with an account of what we have read, then we need to approach texts in a methodical and systematic way. This should not imply mechanical procedures: there will always be differences in the construction of individual texts that need to be given their due. Nonetheless, the idea behind this book is that it is helpful to have a clear idea of possible starting points. Methodical reading picks up what is relevant to elucidate, correct, and confirm our initial vague impressions of a text.1 Such a reading does not pretend to be completely objective or scientific . We are bound to feel the influence of our own life-histories as we read and write, to be affected by personal and emotional problems, as well as the social and historical context in which we live. We all start our read- reading novels 2 ings from different contexts, and place them against slightly different sets of values and belief systems. But criticism that lays too much emphasis on the reader’s own situation rapidly becomes narcissistic. As Umberto Eco says, “It is not at all forbidden to use a text for daydreaming, and we do this frequently, but daydreaming is not a public affair; it leads us to move within the narrative wood as if it were our own private garden.”2 Good readings direct and redirect our attention toward aspects of texts that can be confirmed by other readers, toward points that have not been widely noticed, or that others have mistaken. Overcoming the Blocked Response Most of us have faced the problem at some time of wanting to join in the debate about a work of literature, and yet finding we do not know what to say. Without a developed vocabulary for discussing literary texts, it is difficult to be precise, even to ourselves, about our responses. Repetitions of how we like a novel, or find it “realistic,” quickly become banal. It can happen that we read and re-read a text without being sure what makes it distinctive, or what is worth taking note of, or worth talking about. Fanny Elmer, in Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room, has such problems. She tells herself that she has read quite a few books (by Scott and Dumas), but doesn’t understand how her boyfriend can find eighteenth-century novels worthwhile. For this dull stuff (Fanny thought) about people with odd names is what Jacob likes. Good people like it. Dowdy women who don’t mind how they cross their legs read Tom Jones—a mystic book; for there is something, Fanny thought, about books which if I had been educated I could have liked—much better than ear-rings and flowers, she sighed, thinking of the . . . fancy-dress dance next week. She had nothing to wear. (Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room, 1922, chap. 10) A methodical approach to analysis helps overcome blocked responses like Fanny’s; it takes us beyond the vague incomprehension of phrases such as “dull stuff,” or “mystic book.” It should also prevent a drift from texts into thoughts of earrings, flowers, and fancy-dress dances. Methodological tools always have their limitations, and an elaboration of technical jargon becomes opaque and distracting, but method is useful when it helps concentrate on the particularities of the text in hand. [54.208.238.160] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 18:01 GMT) introduction 3 Although the techniques described in this book are not independent of literary theory, the book does not aim to be a work of...