Textual Analysis 101

When was the last time you carefully listened to the lyrics of your favorite song and asked what was really happening? Too often we are swept away by the melody and the words are just embellishments as this NSFW R-rated, but funny, ad demonstrates:

Was high school composition the last time you analyzed a piece of literature line by line? Do you remember the feeling when you heard or read a line and understood exactly what the allusions and references meant and that knowledge elevated your appreciation for the source material to a higher level and made you feel like you were “in” on something special?

You don’t have to be exhaustively well read or a collector of Cliff’s Notes to find enrichment by delving a bit deeper into a “text.” And when the text is more approachable, more immediately relevant to your interests, the analysis is nowhere near as tedious as you might remember from English class.

Textual analysis is like a treasure hunt or a criminal investigation, putting together the pieces that were intentionally or unintentionally left behind, inching toward illumination and the rewards of understanding.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be bringing sexy textual analysis back with a series of posts on word and song.

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