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Digging into Literature
Digging into Literature reveals the critical strategies that any college student can use for reading, analyzing, and writing about literary texts. The authors’ unique approach is based on groundbreaking studies of the successful interpretive and rhetorical moves of hundreds of professional and student essays. Full of practical charts and summaries-- with plenty of exercises and activities for trying out the strategies-- the book convincingly reveals that while great literature is complex, writing effective essays about it doesn’t have to be.
441 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 27, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 6, 2021
One of the better intro to lit crit textbooks
May 9, 2024
Decent as far as textbooks go. The only two things I recall from it were:
- Kenneth Burke's metaphor of literature being a conversation (a "parlor" in his language) which you walk into late, while it's been going on for a while, and you have to watch and listen to figure out what they're talking about, and if you're lucky you'll eventually get a chance to add something. Much more modest and respectful than how many egotists and radicals see things.
- There are levels of proficiency when it comes to using sources for papers or projects. For some reason, none of my professors ever taught me this in my undergraduate. I was able to just find sources which vaguely backed up what I wanted to say, and that was that. But instead, inspired by the book, I developed these levels:
Level 0: No sources used, remains outside of the conversation
Level 1: Using sources to confirm your point of view
Level 2: Disagreeing with sources
Level 3: Synthesizing disparate sources
Level 4: Finding something new or overlooked to remark on
The only misleading thing about these "levels" is that they might imply you must move in order, when in reality they are more an attempt to describe the increasing complexity or difficulty of such source usage.
A couple of things that I think were stupid/incorrect:
- They described binaries as "opposites" rather than just, well, binaries. Binaries, like "man and nature" or "male and female" are not opposites, but simply groupings of two with some notable difference which sets them apart, despite their constant interactions.
- I thought the surface/depth distinction was a bad one, one which leads more to conspiracy thinking than critical thinking. They even had a "professor" "speak aloud" while reading some passage, and they just spitballed/made random associations while reading, overanalyzing a text in the classic way that all high schoolers rightly point out. For example, when a teacher goes "why did John Steinbeck decide to make it a blue ____?", that sort of reading risks imbuing (or infusing) text with unintended meanings, and otherwise overcomplicating a text. It's some advanced form of pattern recognition, and it's really unhelpful when reading to constantly do that to yourself. Apparently in Ocean Vuong's poetry workshops, they only "notice" things, not commenting on them at all, for the first half or so of the semester. That means that they aren't imposing their own crappy interpretations, they're noticing what all is there, and noticing what others notice (or don't notice). This, in my opinion, is a much better way to come to a slower, and thus more mature, more nuanced understanding of the text, rather than trying to "dig beneath" the text, as if there's something "hidden" (thus the conspiracy theory mindset).
- Kenneth Burke's metaphor of literature being a conversation (a "parlor" in his language) which you walk into late, while it's been going on for a while, and you have to watch and listen to figure out what they're talking about, and if you're lucky you'll eventually get a chance to add something. Much more modest and respectful than how many egotists and radicals see things.
- There are levels of proficiency when it comes to using sources for papers or projects. For some reason, none of my professors ever taught me this in my undergraduate. I was able to just find sources which vaguely backed up what I wanted to say, and that was that. But instead, inspired by the book, I developed these levels:
Level 0: No sources used, remains outside of the conversation
Level 1: Using sources to confirm your point of view
Level 2: Disagreeing with sources
Level 3: Synthesizing disparate sources
Level 4: Finding something new or overlooked to remark on
The only misleading thing about these "levels" is that they might imply you must move in order, when in reality they are more an attempt to describe the increasing complexity or difficulty of such source usage.
A couple of things that I think were stupid/incorrect:
- They described binaries as "opposites" rather than just, well, binaries. Binaries, like "man and nature" or "male and female" are not opposites, but simply groupings of two with some notable difference which sets them apart, despite their constant interactions.
- I thought the surface/depth distinction was a bad one, one which leads more to conspiracy thinking than critical thinking. They even had a "professor" "speak aloud" while reading some passage, and they just spitballed/made random associations while reading, overanalyzing a text in the classic way that all high schoolers rightly point out. For example, when a teacher goes "why did John Steinbeck decide to make it a blue ____?", that sort of reading risks imbuing (or infusing) text with unintended meanings, and otherwise overcomplicating a text. It's some advanced form of pattern recognition, and it's really unhelpful when reading to constantly do that to yourself. Apparently in Ocean Vuong's poetry workshops, they only "notice" things, not commenting on them at all, for the first half or so of the semester. That means that they aren't imposing their own crappy interpretations, they're noticing what all is there, and noticing what others notice (or don't notice). This, in my opinion, is a much better way to come to a slower, and thus more mature, more nuanced understanding of the text, rather than trying to "dig beneath" the text, as if there's something "hidden" (thus the conspiracy theory mindset).
February 8, 2019
Really great text to use in a composition course that focuses on literature. I have so many helpful texts to pull from for a comp 101 course regarding writing about nonfiction, but I had yet to find a good text that discusses how the same methods apply to literature.
This text is small and manageable; I found nearly all the chapters would be helpful in a course. It includes some poems and other short works and essay samples too to practice that methods discussed without bogging down or bloating a text with a lot of stories I wouldn't use in my syllabus. What's more, the chapters use contemporary references to pop culture to showcase that literary analysis has opened up to exploring various "texts" deeming them too as worthy of critical attention.
Although some of this might be review for some students, the authors acknowledge those moments and clarify what parts are reminders and which parts are furthering the conversation. The book is also written in a accessible way that both I and, I assume, students would find easy to read. I have already used some of the exercises in my class as well and found them helpful to generate specific conversations and to simply revamp my lesson plans.
This text is small and manageable; I found nearly all the chapters would be helpful in a course. It includes some poems and other short works and essay samples too to practice that methods discussed without bogging down or bloating a text with a lot of stories I wouldn't use in my syllabus. What's more, the chapters use contemporary references to pop culture to showcase that literary analysis has opened up to exploring various "texts" deeming them too as worthy of critical attention.
Although some of this might be review for some students, the authors acknowledge those moments and clarify what parts are reminders and which parts are furthering the conversation. The book is also written in a accessible way that both I and, I assume, students would find easy to read. I have already used some of the exercises in my class as well and found them helpful to generate specific conversations and to simply revamp my lesson plans.
August 1, 2019
It’s a textbook, yes, but it reads so easy and is so interesting that I finished it a few weeks into my class! (Don’t be to impressed, it’s very short.) I’ve never read a book on literary analysis that covers so much in such a simple and easy to understand way. It was captivating, and I’d recommend it to anyone who is — or wants to be — and English teacher.
December 23, 2017
interesting textbook about reading and analyzing literature.
January 24, 2018
Read for class.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews