On Fri, 29 Sep 2000 15:11:59 -0500, Joe Ahearn wrote:

>Is the idea of "difficulty" in literature a modern idea? 

- "difficulty" in lit. usually comes to mean difficulty _for the
sudent of lit._, where "student" encompasses a range of levels of
study. The whole idea of an "average reader" - today or in ages past
and gone - seems a bit misleading in this context. When you study
something, i.e. give it a decent level of attention, you're liable
pretty soon to find things about it which are "difficult", which
present problems. At that point, I guess many of Langland's "audience"
would have had severe "difficulties" with chunks of PP, which is
pretty confrontational - but not, on the whole, the bits we find
"dificult" today.

Perhaps it's like legal difficulties, which always exist where there
are two lawyers: if you've got two different "readings" of a piece of
lit., (and everyone's readings _are_ different in my experience)
you've got incipient "difficulty". Many of the "difficulties" which
some readers experience with some texts - past or present - are not
necessarily helped, it seems to me, by other people's criticiques.

There are, however, fundamental difference between the ways in which
people react when faced with such "difficulties", and I expect these
have always been there in one form or another too. There's the Ugh!
Nasty Difficulty! Drop it and Run! school of readership, and there's
the Ah, Here's a Potential Problem, Let's See What We Can Make Of It
s.o.r. Now here there's a radical difference between, for example, me
and my brother-in-law:

- I tend to run away from difficulties in keeping my car (or indeed
any other mechanical or electronic device) functioning, whereas he's
never happier than when he's up to his oxters in grease, and many
vehicles in his posession spend more time in bits than they do
together.

- I, in general terms, like to have a certain amount of linguistic
grease up my sleeves, enjoy a bit of a reading problem here and there,
whereas he prefers those forms of literature which offer a Good
Straightforward Read At The End Of The Day.

There are many times when our worlds meet, of course. I believe our
counterparts have existed for many years. I'd hate to get caught up on
the question of "difficulty" to the point where I stopped looking for
what a bit of lit. actually had to offer.

RC


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