How do you guys feel about Commentaries/critical studies written on Novels?

[spookymulder93]

I want to start analyzing certain novels I read so I can get more out of them,but I never really learned how to analyze literature so I was wondering if reading commentaries that have been written about the novel a good way to start since the author of the commentary would be a professional. The next book I plan on buying is Notes from the underground by Dostoyevsky and I was gonna pick up this http://www.amazon.com/Dostoyevskys-Underground-Critical-Studies-Literature/dp/1853993433/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267766213&sr=8-1 to go with it.

[Modest Proposal]

I sometimes buy books in the Bedford Critical Editions, but those tend to be pretty based on theory or methodology. That is, there will be a structuralist essay, a feminist essay, a marxist essay, etc. This can be helpful for school but depending on your tastes, might be more like medicine than dessert.

What I would recommend is to buy editions with a strong forward and afterward. I wouldn't read them until you finish the book as they will spoil some things, but these tend to be aimed at elucidating contexts, praising the work and illuminating some of the important aspects without shoving the essayists personal ideology down your throat.

[wat??]

My copy of Tao Te Ching would be, at least to me, nigh unintelligible without the sixty page forward.

I don't read any literary criticism at the moment, but I've thought about looking into it. This thread should be of interest to me as well.

[mal4mac]

Bryan Magee in "Confessions of a Philosopher" has some good tips on approaching the secondary literature. He points out that almost all secondary commentators are dummies from minor colleges who will not be forgotten because they have never been noticed.

You are far better simply re-reading the "great work".

If the "great work" is *really* difficult, Magee suggests finding the book on that great work that most people acknowledge to be the most helpful *and no other*.

By *really* difficult Magee means things like Kant's Critiques. For any works that, say, make it into the Bloom's canon you shouldn't need any secondary literature. Though it's often worth finding a version with good notes! But the average publisher, translator, & note maker is no better than the average college commentator so it can be difficult to find a well produced book with goods notes.

The RSC Complete Shakespeare I would hold up as an example of a good book - definitely my desert island selection - the introductions to the plays, and the notes, are by two of the most respected Shakespeare commentators currently at large. Both are professors at major universities whose books have received the greatest plaudits from their peers. The RSC is aimed at the common reader, not the pedantic scholar, also a good thing. It cuts down on the amount of secondary material you have to plough through. Always a good thing, even if it's the best secondary material.

I would like to understand Shakespeare better but my approach will be to re-read the RSC and some of great writers he read (e.g. Ovid), and not Joe Bloggs from Cornwall College. I've read too much by Joe Bloggs. No more!

[kiki1982]

In the French editions of Livre de Poche Classique, they usually ask academic specialists in the field to make the footnotes, prefaces, introductions, endnotes etc.

There some really good essayists, better than the average college commentator, though, who have written great stuff on certain books. I wouln't all dismiss them.

[Drkshadow03]

I want to start analyzing certain novels I read so I can get more out of them,but I never really learned how to analyze literature so I was wondering if reading commentaries that have been written about the novel a good way to start since the author of the commentary would be a professional. The next book I plan on buying is Notes from the underground by Dostoyevsky and I was gonna pick up this http://www.amazon.com/Dostoyevskys-Underground-Critical-Studies-Literature/dp/1853993433/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267766213&sr=8-1 to go with it.

Norton Critical Editions are always good because they include selections of criticism at the end of the actual text, along with other culturally relevant material.

To be honest, if you're just starting off learning to read critically, even Spark Notes couldn't hurt.

You can find literary criticism in databases such as Academic Search Premier, Literature Resource Center, and MLA International Bibliography, through a university library and sometimes, though rarely, through public libraries.

Like Mal4mac suggests, essays found in these resources can be on the esoteric side, focusing on very specific topics like the symbolism of music in James Joyce's Dubliners or Post-Colonial Theory in Shakespeare's The Tempest. However, don't give his misinformed viewpoint too much credence, these can still be good sources to learn about a text. It really depends how deeply you want to go into a text, how specialized your interested in getting, etc.

If you were a professor or a grad student going into these other secondary sources would not only be useful, but necessary. The point is to figure out how deeply you want to delve into texts, if you want to look at major issues or also study minor issues.

You could try this book (http://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Literature-Like-Professor/dp/006000942X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267806980&sr=8-1).

[mal4mac]

Are you saying that Bryan Magee is a source of misinformation Drkshadow03? If so that puts your critical faculties in great doubt...

[Drkshadow03]

Are you saying that Bryan Magee is a source of misinformation Drkshadow03? If so that puts your critical faculties in great doubt...

If it's unclear, I'm saying I partially disagree with Magee. People not working in Ivy League colleges aren't dummies, especially since many of them graduated from Ivy League colleges themselves. If it were otherwise than the implication is that the knowledge Ivy League professors possess cannot be transmitted, and therefore even reading their books is a waste of time. Secondary works about esoteric topics or even just works produced by professors not in the Ivy League or top-tier colleges have their purpose too. He's correct in the sense that when 100,000+ articles and almost as many books have been written on Shakespeare from all over the place, for the average reader it makes more sense to focus on a few really good secondary sources and spend most of their time reading the work.

For academics who specialize in narrow areas of study, they need to keep abreast with a much wider field of secondary sources, since they need to keep up to date and be part of the evolving conversation. The scholarship produced by these so-called dummies from secondary colleges is a part of the conversation as well. Also, his comment, "who will not be forgotten because they have never been noticed" is deceptive too. Spivak, Derrida, and Foucault certainly have been noticed, but that doesn't necessarily make their criticism about literature good, accessible, or geared towards a general readership, even though, you can't fail to take an English class, especially at the graduate level without encountering one of those scholars at some point.


The question is rarely about good versus bad criticism, which I think is implied in Magee's statement (although certainly some bad criticism does exist), but narrow versus broad. So, should the OP, want to delve much more deeply into Hamlet, it might make sense for him to go a little further than just one top-rated secondary book on the topic; it might pay to read articles with a narrower focus because you can learn a lot from those articles as well.

To put it another way, reading twenty books of criticism on Milton's Paradise Lost is clearly going to be more valuable than reading just one book of criticism. However, then it also becomes a question of goals, too. If one wants to get through a large portion of the Canon, then every book of criticism is going to slow them down.

My advice is this:

For the average reader, one book of criticism per a work might be fine. But after getting through a lot of works, if you find some works that you really enjoyed and you want to know more about, then it probably makes sense to delve into a good chunk of the secondary literature at a later time.