[CLUE-Talk] Tolkien and allegory

[Jeff Cann]

On Saturday 10 January 2004 2:42 pm, Dennis J Perkins wrote:
...
> I'm not a believer in literary analysis and avoided literature classes
> in high school and college whenever possible.  

LOL -  Is literary analysis a belief system?  I thought it was a method of 
trying to understand and / or critique an author's writing.

> The purpose of most stories is simple... tell an entertaining story.  Good
> stories have real plots to hold our attention.  

I would argue against 'most stories simply tell an entertaining story'.  Some 
certainly do; others do not.

> They do not require analysis to understand them, altho some people might
> enjoy analyzing them. 

But many stores *do* require analysis.  In fact, I would argue that when you 
are reading literature from a historical time period, how can you understand 
what you're reading without some analysis -- particularly to get the context 
of the story?  What about reading translated works?

Also, some stories have two stories - they one that is obvious and the other,  
underlying point.  There are many reasons for this type of writing.  One 
example is when an author wishes to make a political point contrary to his 
government's.  He cannot simply state his opinion within his story for fear 
of censorship.  So, clever writers hide their opinions or thoughts within the 
context of another story.  Analysis yields these embedded thoughts.

Other writers purposely veil their meanings so the reader has to consider the 
work beyond the words on the page.  These are the great works of literature 
-- something you learn about in literature classes! :)

Finally, IIRC literary analysis is used to bind stories together to understand 
their social context.  There are many different 'ages' of literature and they 
are grouped together not only by date, but by style.  Those style 
commonalities are the result of literary analysis.

Later,
Jeff
-- 
http://isuma.org/