Can you over prepare?

I am starting an English Literature course at University this year. I feel like I can succeed in it but it will take a fair amount of hard work. I'm tempted to say I feel a little out of my depth but that's not really correct, more that I know I'll have to stay on top of things to keep up.
I've been reading the books on my reading list thoroughly and researching them on the internet to get different theories and opinions about them in order to be very familiar with the texts. My concern is that by doing this I'm trampling on my own discovery of the book and will just end up with a head full of everyone else's ideas.
So am I over preparing or do you think its a good idea?

Reply 1

dNydZl

One book is plagiarism, two books is research. Read as much as possible.

Reply 2

hobnob

dNydZl

One book is plagiarism, two books is research. Read as much as possible.

Hmm, I know you probably just meant this as a joke, but that's oversimplified nonsense. :erm:

Plagiarism isn't about the number of books you use, it's about how you use them, so it's perfectly possible to use just one source and reference it properly (although, to be fair, it would be considered a pretty poor effort), and it's equally possible to use ten sources and plagiarise.
Similarly, 'read as much as possible' is bad advice. You need to be selective about your reading and try to make sure you've read the relevant and important stuff before branching out into the more obscure. Reading indiscriminately won't get you anywhere.

To Brett23: if you're worried about being too heavily influenced by other people's readings, start off by reading just the primary texts and making detailed notes of your own responses to them. Once you have a decent idea of what your own views actually are, move on to the secondary stuff. You may end up modifying your own reading afterwards (for example if you realise that you grossly misunderstood a passage or that you missed a specific reference within the text which is significant for your reading of it), but that's not really the main point of secondary reading. The reason why you're reading secondary criticism is so that you're aware of what's out there, i.e. what the main categories of criticism on a particular text are, how they have developed over time, and how your own reading is positioned in relation to them. Try to regard secondary reading as complementary to your own thoughts (and possibly as a means of sparking new thoughts), not as something to substitute them with.

Reply 3

evantej

Brett23

I am starting an English Literature course at University this year. I feel like I can succeed in it but it will take a fair amount of hard work. I'm tempted to say I feel a little out of my depth but that's not really correct, more that I know I'll have to stay on top of things to keep up.
I've been reading the books on my reading list thoroughly and researching them on the internet to get different theories and opinions about them in order to be very familiar with the texts. My concern is that by doing this I'm trampling on my own discovery of the book and will just end up with a head full of everyone else's ideas.

So am I over preparing or do you think its a good idea?

hobnob's advice is good, though I will add my own too.

C.S. Lewis wrote that one of the main functions of reading is to 'deprovincialise' the reader. If you read well you will soon realise that it is impossible to over prepare, because there are some things you cannot account for nor prepare for. Lewis also stressed the importance of primary-source reading; this is one area you simply cannot over prepare for because of the sheer quantity of texts that exist, which is where hobnob's advice about selective reading is important. You will find over time that you start to deploy particular ways of reading and researching to be exhaustive and to save time too.

In my experience, most lecturers tend to be more impressed by the depth and width of primary reading rather than comprehension of secondary material (you can use both of these points to your advantage); of course, an awareness of critical material is important for high-level criticism, but you will find that a lot of criticism is ideological nonsense, and easily dismissed through with a thorough reading. To summarise (hobnob will like this), Lewis wrote that '[n]egative statements are of course particularly dangerous for the lazy or hurried reviewer. And here at once, is a lesson for us all as critics. One passage out of the whole Faerie Queene will justify you in saying that Spenser sometimes does so-and-so: only an exhaustive reading and an unerring memory will justify the statement that he never does so'.

Can you over prepare?

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