The Magic of Reading: A Student of Literature’s Emotional Testimony
¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 Sheila Gross
¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 Dr. Alexis Lothian
¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 ENGL 985: Archives and Feelings
¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 10 September 2013
¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0
The Magic of Reading: A Student of Literature’s Emotional Testimony
“Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury and remedying it.”
¶ 8 Leave a comment on paragraph 8 0 – J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
¶ 9 Leave a comment on paragraph 9 0 I was ten when Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was published in the United States, and though I didn’t start reading the book until I was a few years older, I am considered to be a first generation Harry Potter reader. My sister and I grew up reading these books and watching the films. As I got older and continued to re-read the novels, I started to contemplate why I kept re-reading year after year this particular series of popular fiction. Was it because I connected to a particular character? While I do like Hermione and identify with her love of learning, this wasn’t the sole reason why I re-read the novels. And it wasn’t because I necessarily had a shared experience with the characters. After all, I never attended a boarding school, let alone a magical one; my relationships differed in many ways to the characters in the novels; and I never had to face the certainty of death. Was it possible that I re-visited the Harry Potter series so frequently because of the pure enjoyment of reading? Absolutely, and this is why I became a student of literature.
¶ 10 Leave a comment on paragraph 10 0 My undergraduate advisor would cringe if she were to read what I’m about to assert, but I have never experienced so much enjoyment, so much “magic” than reading the Harry Potter series. Though the point of this essay is not to make an argument as to whether this series should be taught in an undergraduate class, I do feel very passionately about providing students with the opportunity to, quite frankly, love a text as much as I do. As a future professor of literature, if I can somehow provide students with the opportunity to reach into the depths of their hearts and find that place where magic happens for them and somehow steer that magic toward a love of reading, then I will be partly successful in my mission of teaching. If this love of reading leads students to become curious about the books they’re reading and critical analysis happens, then I would near complete success. I like to think that complete success can only be achieved if students become English majors, but I know that’s asking a lot.
¶ 11 Leave a comment on paragraph 11 1 My responsibility as an educator, then, is to promote the enjoyment of reading to all students. In the university, reading is a unifying action, for if one is a student in the university, then one can read. Students from all different backgrounds come together in class, and one way I already know they are similar is that they can read. Therefore, drawing on Antonio Gramsci’s essay “Intellectuals and Education,” I see all students as intellectuals, and all students have the potential to open their hearts to enjoy reading. For what I do as a student of literature and a teacher of literature stems from this enjoyment of reading. When I analyze texts, I hope to glean something (fill in the blank) from these texts. In other words, I hope to “enjoy” them more. Perhaps this is an appropriate time to define what I mean by enjoying literature. While my example above suggests that enjoying a book simply means to take pleasure in reading it, enjoyment, for me, doesn’t end there. My definition of enjoyment also includes having a curiosity of the text which stems from taking pleasure in the reading experience. This curiosity then leads, oftentimes, to research and critical analysis. After all, reading is not simply an escape from the real world, but as Eve Sedgwick suggests in Touching Feeling, reading is “attention, interest” (115). The act of reading itself, she says, is quite like a performance, “as public as it is private” (115). Reading, then, is active, external as much as internal, and part of enjoying a book is to actively read it. Not enjoying a book is also an essential experience for me. By not enjoying a book, I enhance my critical eye as to why I enjoy and do not enjoy a book. Any student of literature has experienced this before: we are required to read Moby Dick for a third time, and though we dislike this book, we are able to analyze why that is, for we know what it is to enjoy a book.
¶ 12 Leave a comment on paragraph 12 0 While my passion for reading has certainly brought me to this point in my academic career, I often wonder if this is a justifiable reason to legitimize myself as a future professor of literature. Based on discussions I’ve had in class on the topic, it seems I should sell myself on the job market as a promoter of social justice, as a teacher of critical thinking, and as a studier of culture. I certainly have no problem doing that, especially if it lands me a position at a university, but what’s missing from this conversation is an element of emotion. When Sedgwick discusses her rationale for choosing Touching Feeling as the title of her collection of essays, she writes that the title “records the intuition that a particular intimacy seems to subsist between textures and emotions” (17). If we include texts within “textures,” which I do, then this aptly describes my relationship to texts: an emotional one. I may have to legitimize myself to a hiring committee or to an administrator as someone who does the things I mentioned above, but personally, I cannot legitimize myself as a professor of literature without the pleasure of reading, without feeling that magic within myself as I read a text.
Works Cited
¶ 14 Leave a comment on paragraph 14 0 Gramsci, Antonio. “Intellectuals and Education.” An Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings, 1916-1935. Ed. David Forgacs. New York: Schocken Books, 1988. 300-22. Print.
¶ 15 Leave a comment on paragraph 15 0 Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. New York: Scholastic, 2007. Print.
¶ 16 Leave a comment on paragraph 16 0 Sedwick, Eve Kosofsky. Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, and Performativity. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2003. Print.
While I was reading this, I was struck by what I’m seeing as an assertion here: this idea that there’s joy in doing some sort of critical reading. I never really thought of it this way; in point of fact, I’m so often focused on the exact opposite that the idea seemed to be a complete impossibility. Too often I try to compartmentalize, to push aside the critic so that I can actually enjoy something, particularly when it comes to stuff within my direct field of interest (meaning animation and films, so talk about ruining the joy).
However, the idea you’re presenting here intrigues me, and not because I find myself disagreeing. On the contrary, I think this is very much in line with what we’re really accomplishing and starts to uncover what’s going on in our warped brains. We start being people who just love literature on the surface (picking up Harry Potter books because THEY’RE AWESOME), and end up thoroughly enjoying because we’re starting to engage in it, and work at honing our critical ideas.
That Sedgwick gets brought in just makes it feel a little more valid (there’s something in getting someone published to agree with you on some level). I think that in some ways we’re enjoying our “performance” of reading and analyzing. There’s this sort of joy out of acting out the part of the academic, and I think it’s one that Sedgwick gets all too well.