Literary criticism is not your forte, my dear fellow. Don't try it. You should leave that to people who haven't been at a University. They do it so well in the daily papers.
There are very few people less qualified to speak, write, or even think about English literature than those who pretend to study it. To put it mildly, barring one acquaintance of mine, they are all imbeciles. The reason for this, aside from the genuine stupidity of some of their lot, is that they think it can be managed by people who can speak English; this is not necessarily true. In fact, this is rarely true. In fact, it is no more true than my driving a car makes me competent to talk about the intricacies of engineering and mass producing an internal combustion engine.
Let us look at a specimen of fairly straightforward 18th-century English prose.
I have observed, that a Reader seldom peruses a Book with Pleasure 'till he knows whether the Writer of it be a black or a fair Man, of a mild or cholerick Disposition, Married or a Batchelor, with other Particulars of the like nature, that conduce very much to the right Understanding of an Author. -from The Spectator no. 1 (Thursday, March 11, 1711) Addison
Now, let's pretend that we're English majors:
"From this text, we can see that tacit racist assumptions underly early 18th century ideas about authorship. The implication of this first sentence is that a reader would not like a book written by a black man, as it must be inferior to the writing of a 'fair man'. Addison will then set out some biographic details in order to allay the readers fears that he may be one such inferior writer"
The problem with this analysis, of course, is that it is absolute bullshit. Our little English major sees the words 'black man' and immensely, modern racial discourse is what is afoot in his little mind. Aside, of course, from the fact that racism, as we know it, was rather unknown to the early 18th century (being, in it's present form, a byproduct of late 18th and 19th century imperial colonization), there is an exceptional meaning that this phrase carries, which can only be recognized by an educated (a "led out of ignorance by instruction in the Latin language") man.
Observe Catullus 93
Nil nimium studio, Caesar, tibi velle placere
nec scire utrum sis albus an ater homo.
Which we will very liberally translate:
Frankly, Caesar, I don't care whether or not you like me
And I don't give a flying fuck whether you're a white or black man.
As Caesar's pigmentation was not a matter of debate among the romans of the late republic (either way, it seems he was not at all shiny but of a lustreless complexion), we know that what is meant here is something more akin to the distinction between good and bad. The idiom in Latin, 'albus an ater sit non curo' merely means 'let him be x or not x, it makes no difference to me'. The word alba also means 'favourable' (since white sparrows - alba avis - were used in divination).
So Addison, it seems, was not a racist. Or maybe he was, I don't care. Merely, the opening of The Spectator no. 1 is definitely not evidence that he was. It is, on the contrary, evidence that he has read Catullus (and, we can surmise, other books as well).
English cannot be profitably read by those who do not understand, at the barest minimum, Latin and French. So, my little English majors, either learn something, or put a sock in it.
