Critical commentaries

[cipherdecoy]

When you're reading, or have read a book, do you read critical commentaries?

Is it advisable to read them, or are they a lazy way out?

[Dark Muse]

I do not often read them, but I have on occassion. Some of them I think can be useful and helpful to understanding the text, but to keep in mind of course is that they are just the opinion's of the critic speaking, and there are some critics who I think will really streach just for the sake of proving thier own agenda. As long as they are read with an open mind and not taken as the ultimate word.

[JBI]

Depends what you call critical commentary. Spark notes aren't, Coles notes aren't, and Bloom's notes are closer, but aren't. IF you want real criticism, you really have to dig, and you really need access to a major library and perhaps JSTOR, and even then...

The useful stuff always takes major amounts of digging, and is rarely worth it unless you are studying the work. Bloom is probably the best available one, but even he wouldn't credit himself as the be all and end all.

I only tend to read commentary - that is, beyond Bloom's anthologies - when I am doing something for University, otherwise, there is no time.

[curlyqlink]

I'm not sure if a book's introduction fits the definition of critical commentary... but I usually only read the introduction after finishing a novel. In fact I wonder why they're placed at the front of the book at all; they really belong at the end. Reading a commentary on a narrative I haven't yet read seems nonsensical to me.

[Drkshadow03]

Depends what you call critical commentary. Spark notes aren't, Coles notes aren't, and Bloom's notes are closer, but aren't. IF you want real criticism, you really have to dig, and you really need access to a major library and perhaps JSTOR, and even then...

The useful stuff always takes major amounts of digging, and is rarely worth it unless you are studying the work. Bloom is probably the best available one, but even he wouldn't credit himself as the be all and end all.

I only tend to read commentary - that is, beyond Bloom's anthologies - when I am doing something for University, otherwise, there is no time.


JBI, I'm not sure what you mean. Finding criticism is not really that difficult as long as you know what you're doing. If you know what databases to go to it takes literally three seconds to find criticism of any work. With that said it can be a bit more difficult when you have a specific topic you want to write about.

Also, most decent critical editions will include good essays on the novel in question and contain a bibliography that should point you in the right direction as far as criticism goes. Then if you hunt those books down they'll often contain their own bibliographies.

-----------------------------

Returning to the original question . . .

Criticism can be useful, but it all depends what you want to know because some can be quite specific and tell you little about the important issues of the novel, focusing on one scene or small issue. I prefer to read novels on my own, only turning to criticism after the fact. I tend to like broader, more general criticism that cover the whole novel.

[Dark Muse]

Yes I agree about introductions, they usually always give the story away if you read them before, so I too will only read them after I have finished reading the story

[mayneverhave]

There is a tendency in me that whenever I am interested in something (particularly art), I have a strong desire to find out everything I can about it.

So yes, I read literary criticism quite thoroughly - usually after I finish reading something (it would seem quite useless if I hadn't read the work first). Examining the works of critics helps broaden my perspective on the work and I gain a fuller appreciation of whatever I'm reading.

Also, when reading criticism by artists themselves, i.e. Goethe, Eliot, STC, etc, it sheds some light on the works of the artists themselves. Reading Eliot's criticism benefits a reading of Eliot's independent work.

[JBI]

Let me clarify - there is a difference between reading an essay on the meaning of a piece, and actually digging up things. If you end up going through theses, and every published essay, there is quite a mountain to sift through - either way though, JSTOR isn't even a good place to go - you really need academic anthologies and collections, and things which weren't even published beyond a few copies. The availability of stuff online for free is actually quite limited compared to the pile of commentary.

Let me put it into perspective - you can easily find books of commentary on writers like Dante, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Dickens, etc. But do you have any idea what kind of a pile you are missing? Just off the top of my head, I can tell you that the Dante Museum in Ravenna Italy boasts over 16000 volumes of Dante criticism - of course you aren't going to read it all, but you definitely aren't going to find as good a selection on the internet.

It is the same with almost any other writer - the Internet is still not a very good place to find research material for advanced levels. It simply doesn't exist for free on there, and isn't organized properly. For anything specific, or uncommon, you need a major library, otherwise you won't find anything.

That being said - it depends on what level on criticism you are looking for. Anything beyond a basic level however, that is, beyond Bloom's notes, and whatever can be milked out of JSTOR and the like, needs to be taken from a private collection (it is for this reason, that major academic libraries require permission to be used, and more important books and articles need specific permission) and is the reason librarians are still an integral part of the process of research.

Of course, if you are just reading a book, and want a few notes and whatnot, then you don't need to go through this all, but if you are writing a major paper, chances are the professors are going to be experts, and aren't going to want to hear the same thing over and over again. They not only want your opinion, they want other opinions, and conflicting opinions.

[Drkshadow03]

Let me clarify - there is a difference between reading an essay on the meaning of a piece, and actually digging up things. If you end up going through theses, and every published essay, there is quite a mountain to sift through - either way though, JSTOR isn't even a good place to go - you really need academic anthologies and collections, and things which weren't even published beyond a few copies. The availability of stuff online for free is actually quite limited compared to the pile of commentary.

Let me put it into perspective - you can easily find books of commentary on writers like Dante, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Dickens, etc. But do you have any idea what kind of a pile you are missing? Just off the top of my head, I can tell you that the Dante Museum in Ravenna Italy boasts over 16000 volumes of Dante criticism - of course you aren't going to read it all, but you definitely aren't going to find as good a selection on the internet.

It is the same with almost any other writer - the Internet is still not a very good place to find research material for advanced levels. It simply doesn't exist for free on there, and isn't organized properly. For anything specific, or uncommon, you need a major library, otherwise you won't find anything.

That being said - it depends on what level on criticism you are looking for. Anything beyond a basic level however, that is, beyond Bloom's notes, and whatever can be milked out of JSTOR and the like, needs to be taken from a private collection (it is for this reason, that major academic libraries require permission to be used, and more important books and articles need specific permission) and is the reason librarians are still an integral part of the process of research.

Of course, if you are just reading a book, and want a few notes and whatnot, then you don't need to go through this all, but if you are writing a major paper, chances are the professors are going to be experts, and aren't going to want to hear the same thing over and over again. They not only want your opinion, they want other opinions, and conflicting opinions.


I agree with a couple of points, but I think there are a few things I disagree with as well.

I would agree that there is a difference between Sparknotes and scholarly criticism. But I am not sure that the essays found in anthologies of criticism are necessarily better than what can be found in an academic database.

Most critics do NOT read through every published essay. Could you imagine that? That's one of the advantages of going through a database, then you can look up a specific subject/theme in the book that interests you using the descriptors and sift through what you're going to need to actually write your paper and whose works intersects with yours.

MLA International Database = better than JSTOR for newer criticism. JSTOR generally collects OLDER criticism being archived.

Otherwise I mostly agree with what you just said. The thing is as someone trained as a librarian and who currently works in an academic library I don't want people to think doing research and finding everything you'll need to write a paper--yes, a successful paper that could get published and become a part of the scholarly discourse--is as a difficult as your making it out to be. I don't want people to get scared or intimidated from doing research.

[WICKES]

Absolutely love it. Not only does literary criticism help you appreciate literature far more deeply and in new ways but it is often a good read in its own right (C S Lewis' lit crit. for example, Frank Kermode's book on Shakespeare, Harold Bloom's book on Shakespeare etc). To me it is simply an extension of the lectures of literature professors at my university.

[Kafka's Crow]

I used the MLA Bibliography extensively during my time at the university. That is the easy bit, you can get a list from there and the real digging starts after that. Thanks God I had access to some of the best libraries, including the British Library and the University of London Library (Senate Hall), and most of the time could find whatever I was looking for. I loved digging for these essays, it was like detective work. I think a lot more stuff is available on the internet now than it used to be back then (2001-2002). Another good source for very fresh critical work is the online database of dissertations called UMI Proquest. There you could browse and buy recent research. As long as you acknowledged them in your essay and bibliography, it was OK as most of the professors were not much aware of that source. Still most British universities use software to catch plagiarism and I think you must acknowledge your sources whether the professor is expected to know them or not. This new research gives you, not only a good picture of the contemporary critical trends but also of the new developments in research methodology. I was indebted to Duncan Greenlaw's MA theses and acknowledged it in my dissertation as well as the bibliography:
http://english.uwaterloo.ca/Greenlaw.html I still have a hard copy of his excellent theses somewhere. This is how it appears in my footnotes
William Duncan Greenlaw Saving Relations: The Game and Play of Interprating Couples in Samuel Beckett’s Trilogy (Unpublished M A thesis ©2000, UMI Company).The real beauty of smaller articles lies in the fact that you can photocopy them without breaching copyrights according to university rule (we were allowed a maximum of 25 pages per book/ journal) and then read, re-read, underline, highlight, annotate, in short really enjoy what you read!

[DeadAsDreams]

For some reason, I always end up reading the reviews of books on amazon. Usually I read them before I read the book, to see if I really want to read the book or not, or I read them after I have read the book to see how my opinion fares with others.

[byquist]

Yes, I enjoy others' "take" on an item of literature. Also, you can run into psychobable and esoteric mind-games. Here's a gem about Fielding's Shamela:

"Just like the compositional stages themselves, their producers and recipients also belong to different strata of actuality of fictivity. The producers and the recipients of the sketch and synopsis stages of the narrative belong to our actual world and are nonfictive beings, whereas the producers and recipients on the narrational level of the narrative belong to a fictive world and are genuinely fictive. When readers empathetically project themselves into the story world, they fictivize themselves and become non-genuinely fictive beings. Actual persons regard the fictive world as fictive, but fictive beings regard it as real. Nongenuinely fictive beings, to the extent that they are fictivized, likewise see the fictive world as nonfictive."

This sounds like at least one form of postmodern thinking. Maybe the writer made money, got a degree, or lectured on this.

[jgweed]

Georg Solti, as he learned a new score, would listen to as many recordings of the piece as he could, taking in the various interpretations, traditions, and sonorities achieved by other great conductors and other orchestras, before mounting the podium and conducting the CSO with his own interpetation.