I think you may have an out of date view of what academics are looking for in literature--or else I was extremely lucky in my college career, another valid possibility. Analyzing simile, metaphor, and, god help us, Freudian symbolism in literature is...pointless? A mechanistic approach to literature? The realm of bad high school English classes? at least according to most of my professors.
More important, and more interesting, is looking at the message that the author is, consciously or un-, conveying in the novel. If you run a critical eye over David Weber's Honor Harrington books, for instance, you can (easily!) see the author's extreme libertarian views, and how he manipulates the plot to ensure that all "liberal" and "social conservative" characters--everyone who doesn't agree with Honor and thus David Weber--turn out to be incompetent, corrupt, cowardly, or some combination of the above. (Well, a couple of characters experience a "road to Damascus" style conversion, becoming disciples of Honor, but that's really more of the same.) (I enjoy the Honor Harrington books, or at least all but the last, but I'm not blind.)
Using Weber as an example is shooting fish in a barrel, of course, but even in more subtle authors you have messages that the authors themselves may not realize they're writing. How often, for instance, do you see any variation from the "true love" message? I can only think of one author, Steven Brust, who has written the divorce or separation of a couple without one or both of them becoming a monster (that's metaphorically, not literally, at least in most cases *grin*). Lois McMaster Bujold is one of the few authors who continue a character's plot past the point of their marriage. Marriage, in fiction, is the goal of life, permanent, and the end of one's interest. This message is hardly new or exclusive to SF, of course, but it's interesting to see how little SF challenges it. For speculative fiction, science fiction is remarkably conservative.
These are two random observations, but it's the kind of analysis that I was taught in university-level English classes. It's also great practice for seeing through propaganda. *grin*
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branchandroot
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Date: 2007-05-14 04:33 am (UTC)More important, and more interesting, is looking at the message that the author is, consciously or un-, conveying in the novel. If you run a critical eye over David Weber's Honor Harrington books, for instance, you can (easily!) see the author's extreme libertarian views, and how he manipulates the plot to ensure that all "liberal" and "social conservative" characters--everyone who doesn't agree with Honor and thus David Weber--turn out to be incompetent, corrupt, cowardly, or some combination of the above. (Well, a couple of characters experience a "road to Damascus" style conversion, becoming disciples of Honor, but that's really more of the same.) (I enjoy the Honor Harrington books, or at least all but the last, but I'm not blind.)
Using Weber as an example is shooting fish in a barrel, of course, but even in more subtle authors you have messages that the authors themselves may not realize they're writing. How often, for instance, do you see any variation from the "true love" message? I can only think of one author, Steven Brust, who has written the divorce or separation of a couple without one or both of them becoming a monster (that's metaphorically, not literally, at least in most cases *grin*). Lois McMaster Bujold is one of the few authors who continue a character's plot past the point of their marriage. Marriage, in fiction, is the goal of life, permanent, and the end of one's interest. This message is hardly new or exclusive to SF, of course, but it's interesting to see how little SF challenges it. For speculative fiction, science fiction is remarkably conservative.
These are two random observations, but it's the kind of analysis that I was taught in university-level English classes. It's also great practice for seeing through propaganda. *grin*