Date Posted:07:09:42 01/18/08 Fri Author: j.jackson Subject: The temptation of Don Quixote.
From p. 16 in "Triangular Desire":
"The reader, who is usually convinced of his own spontaneity, applies to the work the meanings he already sees in the world. . . . The romantic reader, by a marvellous misinterpretation which fundamentally is only a superior truth, identifies himself with Don Quixote, the supreme imitator, and makes of him the model individual."
One of the points being made here: if we pay attention to the misreadings of our beloved literary critics, we often find that literature may already be reading the reader and that literature can offer a corrective to our misreadings (which are really only extensions of our misperceptions of the world/relationships in which we inhabit/participate).
So literary study is important. And, no, we don't "ruin" literature when we analyze it. In fact, we may learn through analysis that it was analyzing us--400 years before the fact.
