When I read a poem by William Wordsworth first comes before starting the reading the idea that he was a romantic poet. Then the whole idea of romanticism interferes with my reading starting with Rousseau. Then comes how T.S. Eliot, the whole band of modern writers creeping in. So many literary literary theories precede my reading. It may not happen to everyone. For I am the student of literature. However, it may be a matter of degrees only everyone will have a preoccupation of something prior to reading a piece of art.
Therefore, I think that critics detract our attentions or interests from enjoying a piece of literature. There are really great poems, spiritually uplifting and loftily subtler. Wordsworth, Shelly, Keats, Blake are really immortal writers. They dedicated their entire lives to composing beautiful poems. They are really matchless and yet we try to understand them through the borrowed eyes of critics.
Critics, not all, make a fuss over, or ruin our reading tendencies. Despite all this I never give up reading classics. I think, save a few ones, great books were written in the past. Nowadasy too some books are really greatly written and they are philosophically rich too, yet in the past there were more people dedicated to writing. Therefore some classics written in the past are never outshone in terms of their depth and philosophy.
Can we find the interminable dedications in anyone in the degree there was in Voltaire now? War and Peace is something magnum opus, Crime and Punishment and the like. Sartre is no doubt a great writer but he follwoed in the steps of Dostoevsky. Existential quotients and even ideas of magic realism were aplenty in the works of Dostoevsky. Read the dream of a ridiculous man. The depth of imagination wherein the writer creates a character who sails across bounds of time and space in dreams link supernatural elements with realistic ones.
All I mean to say is that pieces of art never become obsolete and unbound by any particular theory.
For example the Pilgrim's Progress by John Buniayn is a book that inspires me timelessly and the beauty of expression and the depth of philosophy in that book sways me out of boundedness.
Therefore I appeal: read books irregardless of their roots in a particular literary theory and never subscribe to the idea of critics, and they are hypocrites and vainglorious save a few ones.
Great works of art transcned language, time, and theory. The Bible is always appealing and moving. Can we find a book that can be compared with the profundity of the Mahabharata for the loftiness of its philosophy, linguistic grandeur. Its ideas are so elevated spiritually, philosophically that they are matchless.
We are indeed fortunate enough to have so many classics.
I pray I will have infinite stretches of time so that I can revel in the grandeur s of those tour de force, all of them. But alas I have a little of it. However I want to make the most of them.