I'd say that rote memorization and rhythm are not enough.How true, jheem, but, in my opinion, "analyzing" great literature is something one does, or should do, after, not before, experiencing it.
Analysis is an impediment to visceral enjoyment as much with literature as with music or with the visual arts, at least on first exposure.
That is the fatal flaw in how literature is "taught" to students, I suspect; that and the fact that many english teachers are mindless of the 'music' in great literature.
In my school days, Shakespeare was taught by a humorless, 'army barracks' spinster who dissected it line by line, robbing it of all its poetry. In retrospect, I have often wondered if she even knew that Shakespeare was, above all else, a poet -- "the immortal bard".
She required everyone to memorize lengthy passages from Macbeth and some complete sonnets for periodic written tests, but she never explained that there was any reason to do this except for the pure torture of it.
She compounded the torture by awarding marks for absolutely precise punctuation, for instance, you lost a mark for using a semi-colon instead of a colon, a colon instead of a hyphen, and so on.
It was really memory work for the sake of memory work, not memory work as a portal to the genius of the playwright and the transcendent power and beauty of the english language, transcendent power and beauty which reaches its zenith in the sometimes delicate, sometimes jubilant, sometimes volcanic brushstrokes of "the immortal bard".
I can remember one student, overall the best in the class [we called him "The Machine"], who was totally perplexed by this passage in Macbeth spoken by Macbeth as he contemplates the murder of Duncan:
"Whilst I threat, he lives. Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives".
I told "The Machine" not to analyze it, but to step back from it, to let it flow over him; in short, to
feel it.
He honestly didn't understand it was poetry.
Then he got it. And he loved it.
