Looking back at this course, (a course in which I believe Ibsen was used as a preparatory exercise) I realize that my entire attitude towards literature has be transformed. I never knew the joy of research work. In fact I had never even known it could be considered a joy until we read Byatt. This is partially due to bland literary works who have no more than a few things to say, and partly due to an education system that requires very little of its students as readers. So long as we are able to recognize metaphors and perhaps a few biblical allusions, we are considered "good readers". Reading additional texts solely for the purpose of better understanding the central work is something I had never done prior to this course unless I was specifically writing a research paper. Yet every text ought to be considered as a complex organism. When approaching a text, we must approach it as Phineas approached the bees for study. He began with complete ignorance, noted all the minute details, and did extensive research via Fulla's commentary. We must simultaneously approach each work as a new work and as a re-compilation of all of the stories ever told throughout time. All author's are thieves, they steal from the vast sea of literature, mythology, history, and science already provided them. They then transform this knowledge into the light of their own literary works. We then, as readers reflect this light as transformed by our own minds back into the sea of knowledge from whence it came.
