Reading Literature at Advanced Level

Literature has a ‘grammar’ – a set of conventions, patterns and codes.

Part of skilful reading is to come to recognise and anticipate the results of this ‘grammar’.

There are conventions of...

PlotCharacterThemeNarrative perspectiveSettingOrder & sequenceGenre...and plenty more!

So how do you come to recognise the grammar of literature?

Read more than you watch TV!

Learn to read on 2 levels

The Affective

The Constructive

Some shortcuts to help you along the way...

Every trip is a quest...except when it’s not

Whenever characters eat, a form of communion is taking place

You don’t need fangs to be a vampire and ghosts don’t have to be dead

Form matters

Two gazed into a pool, he gazed and she,Not hand in hand, yet heart in heart, I think,

Pale and reluctant on the water's brink,As on the brink of parting which must be.Each eyed the other's aspect, she and he,

Each felt one hungering heart leap up and sink,Each tasted bitterness which both must drink,

There on the brink of life's dividing sea.Lilies upon the surface, deep below

Two wistful faces craving each for each,Resolute and reluctant without speech: —

A sudden ripple made the faces flowOne moment joined, to vanish out of reach:

So those hearts joined, and ah! were parted so.

Two gazed into a pool, he gazed and she,Not hand in hand, yet heart in heart, I think,

Pale and reluctant on the water's brink,As on the brink of parting which must be.Each eyed the other's aspect, she and he,

Each felt one hungering heart leap up and sink,Each tasted bitterness which both must drink,

There on the brink of life's dividing sea.Lilies upon the surface, deep below

Two wistful faces craving each for each,Resolute and reluctant without speech: —

A sudden ripple made the faces flowOne moment joined, to vanish out of reach:

So those hearts joined, and ah! were parted so.

There is no such thing as a wholly original text...

in fact there is only one story manifesting in multiple and varied forms which share a networked resonance!

There is always a dialogue going on between the old and the new and the entanglement can enrich our appreciation of both.

We can’t avoid interacting with this field of historical influence – even avoidance is a form of interaction!

Writers on the one hand pay homage to the ur-story and at the same time engage in a kind of amnesia in order to find their

own voice

It’s never just rain...

Violence can be literal, symbolic, historic and mythic at the same time!

Symbols are not fixed – meaning is negotiated

We tend to give writers all the credit but reading is also an event o the imagination – the study of literature is the act of one creative intelligence

meeting others across time and space.

It’s all political“I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned: they cost enough: and those who are badly off must go there.” “Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.” “If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”

Flight is always about freedom...unless it isn’t

It’s all about sex...

Caveat – it’s all about sex except sex!

“She achingly stroked his quivering coastal temple of longing and rode the waves of their desire into the harbour of bliss.”

LoveSacrificePleasureSubmissionDominationRebellionConnection

Have you noticed yet that the words ‘always’ and ‘never’ have little place in advanced literary studies?!

Geography matters

We inhabit spaces and those spaces, in turn, inhabit us.

Seasons matter

That time of year thou mayst in me beholdWhen yellow leaves, or none, or few do hangUpon those boughs which shake against the cold:Bare, ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

Sonnet 73

Scars, wounds and physical imperfections are always symbolic

Blindness is never accidental – disability isn’t a necessity in the literary world

The Garden PartyKatherine Mansfield