What is literature?
In the first blog post of this series, I offered the following definition of literature:
“A book is literature if it invites readers to engage with it using the four levels of Biblical interpretation (literal, typological, moral, anagogical) in a way that is readily accessible across time, space, and culture, and is written in a way that enhances rather than detracts from that engagement and accessibility.”
For an overview of each of those levels of Biblical interpretation, you can check out my initial blog post.
How Should We Read Literature?
As hinted at above, literature should be read on four levels: literal, typological, moral, and anagogical. This blog post will be focusing on some general principles of reading on the literal level, with applications for writers.
The literal level of a story where the plot, characters, and setting exist—what we generally think of when we say the word “story.” Most of us were taught the basics of story analysis at some point—how to identify a mentor character, for instance, or track the plot of a story using Freytag’s Pyramid or 3-Act Structure.
And while a lot of that can be helpful in understanding what’s happening in a story, it also veers towards a simplistic understanding of narrative structure. While certain elements of modern narrative structure can be found in older works of literature, some are modern inventions or impositions on older literature.
For example, the Hero’s Journey narrative structure is often equated with 3-Act Structure. But as far as I can tell from studying the shifts in narrative structure throughout time (on which I am far from an expert, but I did a decent amount of research this last summer), the Hero’s Journey is actually a humanist corruption of chiastic narrative structure (which can also be visually portrayed in a circle).
Source: https://blog.reedsy.com/guide/story-structure/heros-journey/
As portrayed above, typical 3-Act Structure begins with the main character in the normal world (not necessarily the real world, but the status quo for the fictional world), progresses to his training in the adventure world, and concludes with his descent into the underworld and defeat of the enemy. While there’s some mirroring of the plot involved in 3-Act Structure (for example, the main character usually returns to the normal world at the end), chiastic structure (pictured below) includes a clear turning point in the middle, after which the story returns to each main narrative event with a twist on each one.
There’s definitely some overlap between chiastic and 3-act structure, but older literature tends to lean towards chiastic structure, while modern literature tends to lean towards 3-act structure. Understanding the basics of each structure type can help you anticipate the narrative movement of a story.
Literary analysis dives much deeper into this, but understanding the basics of narrative structure is enough to prepare you to intelligently engage with literature on the literal level. This is also the easiest level to read at, and so this post is a little simpler than the ones that follow.
How To Not Read Literature
While readers benefit from some understanding of story structure, there comes a point at which it’s unhelpful for the typical reader to focus on structure. Art provides a good analogy for literature here—yes, there are benefits to understanding the use of perspective and so forth in a painting, but if you look at a portrait of a beautiful woman and are thinking about her skeleton, the artist probably did something wrong.
All art is to some extent incarnational, and the better the artist is, the better the structure of the painting or story becomes enfleshed in what we usually think of as art—the painting or sculpture or sonata or novel. While looking for 3-Act Structure or chiasms in a story can help readers better appreciate the artistry of the author, it’s also not where most of the reader’s attention should be focused in literary analysis.
So look for these things, enjoy finding them, but don’t worry about it when you can’t. It doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong as the reader—it probably just means the author did a good job of hiding the structure.