Quote:
Originally Posted by jbjb
It's the forced over-analysis of the books which has put off my kids - trying to read far more into every sentence than the author could in any way have plausibly intended. Sometimes if an author says that something is green, it's just because it's green - you really don't need to read layer upon layer of meaning into it.
|
Isn't that the whole point of studying literature, though: to teach you how to understand what lies beneath the surface? Take Dickens, for example: most of his books have strong elements of satire and commentary on the social conditions prevalent at the time. A child isn't going to see or understand that unless they're taught to see the "sub-text", so to speak. That's the difference between
teaching literature and simply reading for pleasure.