Confused between choosing theory vs not: A novice's…
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Confused between choosing theory vs not: A novice's thoughts on literary theory
Some thoughts I had the other day about whether or not reading literary theory would be a good choice. Would like to discuss them with you.
"Show, don't tell" should ideally mean, viewers should independently feel, interpret, and think of something organically. If there's a theory that states "Zooming in slowly means a pivotal moment in the narration, a moment of realization for the character", and the director does this, and the viewer has been taught this, what really is the difference between this and saying it directly? same for lit theory... if it's said that a particular style, choice of vocabulary, environment description, etc. mean something, then there's nothing "subtle" about it it's like "hey, i'll show it like this, and you're supposed to think/feel a certain way" instead of just saying "hey, think/feel this way" ofc im aware that theories/frameworks help us... but just thought of writing this down before i get tainted by the lit theory thing also is related to the "the curtains are blue"
in defence of theory: i've written many times about how a thought suddenly connecting to another thought (eg., Newton's apple, Archimedes' Eureka!) is by chance here, tristan the classics guy talks about how he'd "never thought" of it that way (https://youtu.be/PKMKqQZXh2c?t=181). now, the theorist would argue that instead of leaving the occurrence of the thought to chance, you increase the probability significantly by using a pre-built theory. ofc, the criticism i had still exists... how do i view the text for what it is? perhaps, dickens never thought of it and it's just a case of the blue curtain, reading into something that doesn't exist. but an argument to this would be that dickens might have been *influenced* by the thought subconsciously, and this framework helps uncover possible influences... after all, the book exists in a particular context, culture, and reading about that culture, author's own life... and we kind of "feed" all that information into the neural net that is the brain, and information "emanates" or "arises"... black box! all just chance! instead, theory just nudges or assists the thinking, giving us *some* semblance of control. ofc, theory can also be helpful in uncovering *actual* cultural elements... for instance, in a world without feminism at all, people might not even identify the systemic oppression of females in the medieval era. think of it like, someone, while reading books extensively, "has" a thought... wait why are females treated badly? a hypthesis... followed by validation, clear pattern in books, history... sets out to write a book that later becomes a canon for feminism. theory is good! but isn't everything influenced by what we know... we already are biased. we add one more bias in the form of the theory, it's not like we otherwise approach it with an untainted mind. still confused haha.
this ofc connects to reduction to buckets and what we know (it's about constructing analogies: when we view something new, the first thing is to map it to something we already know risks reducing it to your bucket and not objectively what it is. concepts, instead of being a cloud of closely connected points floating, risk coalescing into a single mass losing detail), and the loss of "virgin experience" when encountering something new i can take a middle approach... instead of approaching every book with a hammer that is heavy lit. theory, i can instead just read it slowly, allowing myself to think about it, writing down thoughts, allowing them to strike me by being patient and ingesting it slowly, and ofc, *followed* (not preceded) by others' interpretation. this way, i will start identifying patterns myself... just like i've learn grammar to an extent... and i was thinking right now, when i italicized "followed" to kind of emphasize the fact that it HAD (there, i capitalized it as well) to come after and not before my own reading... initially i hadn't italicized it. thought how i (probably) haven't really been told these things, but i just... learnt, perhaps by being exposed to a lot of text, and not like a theory class wherein the teachers drones "use italics for emphasis" and i remembered this fact and used it... it (the italicization). so i can follow a similar approach... instead of an explicit theory in mind, i can just read other's works, and it's fine to read "approaching dickens through darwin's lens", ofc afterwards, instead of drowning in an english lit degree course called "exploring Darwinism in mid-Renaissance Chinese constructionists" that would kind of force (more like, make me unable to unsee - like - you'd try venturing out, forming your own inferences, but inevitably somehow be almost 'pulled' back to the same conclusion you were exposed to, making it challenging to see beyond it.) that view onto everything i read thereon. it's, broadly, a theory vs anti-theory conflict and i think it should have a middle ground like most debates
one step further: theory is just borrowed pattern-recognition. instead of reading a 100 books, doing the "hard" (fine, i didn't do the hard work consciously, the poor brain does it in the background and just "strikes" me with the insight) work of synthesis, and by chance, coming across a solid pattern/insight/observation/world view, someone else did all the hard work for you and present you the end result (and better, the process by which they arrived there, thus sinking it in your brain with experience *and* the bland cold logical fact) this further ties to reinventing the universe to make an apple pie from scratch... still confused but with more arguments for either side hehe.
#entertainment
source
Some thoughts I had the other day about whether or not reading literary theory would be a good choice. Would like to discuss them with you.
"Show, don't tell" should ideally mean, viewers should independently feel, interpret, and think of something organically. If there's a theory that states "Zooming in slowly means a pivotal moment in the narration, a moment of realization for the character", and the director does this, and the viewer has been taught this, what really is the difference between this and saying it directly? same for lit theory... if it's said that a particular style, choice of vocabulary, environment description, etc. mean something, then there's nothing "subtle" about it it's like "hey, i'll show it like this, and you're supposed to think/feel a certain way" instead of just saying "hey, think/feel this way" ofc im aware that theories/frameworks help us... but just thought of writing this down before i get tainted by the lit theory thing also is related to the "the curtains are blue"
in defence of theory: i've written many times about how a thought suddenly connecting to another thought (eg., Newton's apple, Archimedes' Eureka!) is by chance here, tristan the classics guy talks about how he'd "never thought" of it that way (https://youtu.be/PKMKqQZXh2c?t=181). now, the theorist would argue that instead of leaving the occurrence of the thought to chance, you increase the probability significantly by using a pre-built theory. ofc, the criticism i had still exists... how do i view the text for what it is? perhaps, dickens never thought of it and it's just a case of the blue curtain, reading into something that doesn't exist. but an argument to this would be that dickens might have been *influenced* by the thought subconsciously, and this framework helps uncover possible influences... after all, the book exists in a particular context, culture, and reading about that culture, author's own life... and we kind of "feed" all that information into the neural net that is the brain, and information "emanates" or "arises"... black box! all just chance! instead, theory just nudges or assists the thinking, giving us *some* semblance of control. ofc, theory can also be helpful in uncovering *actual* cultural elements... for instance, in a world without feminism at all, people might not even identify the systemic oppression of females in the medieval era. think of it like, someone, while reading books extensively, "has" a thought... wait why are females treated badly? a hypthesis... followed by validation, clear pattern in books, history... sets out to write a book that later becomes a canon for feminism. theory is good! but isn't everything influenced by what we know... we already are biased. we add one more bias in the form of the theory, it's not like we otherwise approach it with an untainted mind. still confused haha.
this ofc connects to reduction to buckets and what we know (it's about constructing analogies: when we view something new, the first thing is to map it to something we already know risks reducing it to your bucket and not objectively what it is. concepts, instead of being a cloud of closely connected points floating, risk coalescing into a single mass losing detail), and the loss of "virgin experience" when encountering something new i can take a middle approach... instead of approaching every book with a hammer that is heavy lit. theory, i can instead just read it slowly, allowing myself to think about it, writing down thoughts, allowing them to strike me by being patient and ingesting it slowly, and ofc, *followed* (not preceded) by others' interpretation. this way, i will start identifying patterns myself... just like i've learn grammar to an extent... and i was thinking right now, when i italicized "followed" to kind of emphasize the fact that it HAD (there, i capitalized it as well) to come after and not before my own reading... initially i hadn't italicized it. thought how i (probably) haven't really been told these things, but i just... learnt, perhaps by being exposed to a lot of text, and not like a theory class wherein the teachers drones "use italics for emphasis" and i remembered this fact and used it... it (the italicization). so i can follow a similar approach... instead of an explicit theory in mind, i can just read other's works, and it's fine to read "approaching dickens through darwin's lens", ofc afterwards, instead of drowning in an english lit degree course called "exploring Darwinism in mid-Renaissance Chinese constructionists" that would kind of force (more like, make me unable to unsee - like - you'd try venturing out, forming your own inferences, but inevitably somehow be almost 'pulled' back to the same conclusion you were exposed to, making it challenging to see beyond it.) that view onto everything i read thereon. it's, broadly, a theory vs anti-theory conflict and i think it should have a middle ground like most debates
one step further: theory is just borrowed pattern-recognition. instead of reading a 100 books, doing the "hard" (fine, i didn't do the hard work consciously, the poor brain does it in the background and just "strikes" me with the insight) work of synthesis, and by chance, coming across a solid pattern/insight/observation/world view, someone else did all the hard work for you and present you the end result (and better, the process by which they arrived there, thus sinking it in your brain with experience *and* the bland cold logical fact) this further ties to reinventing the universe to make an apple pie from scratch... still confused but with more arguments for either side hehe.
#entertainment
source
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