First off: Bloom's a hack and a sell-out. Can't stand the man, refuse to read his stuff. Yuck.
Second: Once you've got the training, baby, you can't get rid of it. If you train yourself to look for subtexts, you're stuck with it. Sucks, but it's life. I couldn't read/watch something without analyzing it, but I do find that it enhances my appreciation of the text, if not that of those around me! ;)
Re: Persuasion. You need to read MY article. Send me an email and I'll send it to you. It's all about Austen's happy endings and how they're all about the man learning stuff, because, like, it's a romance! Duh. So, yeah, I agree with you. But I also agree with all the other stuff that most other critics say about Austen, because it IS there in the text, whether she meant it or not, and yeah, some of us reach a little too far, but some of us feel that we're adding to our understanding of the text by analyzing it.
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Second: Once you've got the training, baby, you can't get rid of it. If you train yourself to look for subtexts, you're stuck with it. Sucks, but it's life. I couldn't read/watch something without analyzing it, but I do find that it enhances my appreciation of the text, if not that of those around me! ;)
Re: Persuasion. You need to read MY article. Send me an email and I'll send it to you. It's all about Austen's happy endings and how they're all about the man learning stuff, because, like, it's a romance! Duh. So, yeah, I agree with you. But I also agree with all the other stuff that most other critics say about Austen, because it IS there in the text, whether she meant it or not, and yeah, some of us reach a little too far, but some of us feel that we're adding to our understanding of the text by analyzing it.
But I still agree with you! Romance, definitely.