Chapter 3. Introduction, Appreciation, and Commentary of Literary Works
Section 1. One Person, One Horn
I. Each Blows Their Own Tune
Every year, Taiwan’s literary market sees new writers joining the scene. However, the introduction, appreciation, and commentary of these works remain comparatively weak. The main reason is that university literature departments in Taiwan have historically not placed much emphasis on this field, focusing instead on individual academic papers and promotion requirements for academic advancement. Taiwan lacks professional practitioners dedicated to literary introduction or criticism; most are temporary part-time workers. As a result, the introduction or commentary of literary works often becomes “one person, one horn, each blowing their own tune,” or simply individual “reading experience reports” based on personal ability. This article aims to clarify, under such an unfavorable environment, what correct understanding should be possessed by meta-cultural creators who wish to “work part-time” in the introduction or commentary of literary works.
II. Literary criticism is not a product manual
The introduction, appreciation, and commentary of literary works are different from the “instruction manuals” of commercial products. The former is primarily an aesthetic act of interpreting texts, while the latter guides users on how to correctly operate a product. However, many temporary part-time writers of poetry criticism often confuse “introduction, appreciation, and commentary,” mixing them in the same pot and stir-frying them together. As a result, what is presented to readers is a sticky mass of “textual batter,” often impossible to digest; even if readers force themselves to finish it, their understanding of the literary work remains like viewing flowers through fog—unclear and difficult to absorb.
Section 2. Three Levels of Literary Interpretation
The interpretation of literary works can be divided into three levels: introduction, appreciation, and commentary. Each targets different readerships, and each requires different conditions and levels of theoretical depth.
I. The three levels from shallow to deep
- Introduction
The target of introduction is the general public. Its purpose is to guide readers into appreciating a text. An introduction may briefly present the author and explain the creative background of the work, but its focus must remain on guiding appreciation of the work itself, helping readers understand the theme and the main ideas expressed in the text. Through an aesthetic mode of writing, it leads readers to perceive the textual beauty between paragraphs and to experience the aesthetic meaning intended by the author.
- Appreciation
Appreciation is an analytical and explanatory reading of the text, aimed at readers who are fans of such works. Such analysis must help readers enter the text, understand the expressive techniques used, and appreciate the imagery and rhetorical beauty within it. Writers of appreciation must possess basic rhetorical theoretical literacy, be able to correctly compare and analyze the expressive methods and formal design used in the text, and point out its aesthetic characteristics.
- Commentary
Commentary is the highest level of textual interpretation. It targets readers with substantial reading experience and focuses on evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the text’s imagery and expressive techniques, as well as comparative analysis with similar works. Critics must undergo professional training in literary criticism, possess a broad theoretical vision and practical methodological competence, and be able to select appropriate critical frameworks according to genre and subject matter, producing criticism that is substantial, reasoned, and well-supported.
II. Formal conditions required for each level
The author will now introduce these three interpretive levels and their respective formal conditions:
- Introduction of works
Introduction refers to “guided reading” conducted by the introducer on literary works. Its audience is the general public, and its function is to provide them, before reading, with conceptual understanding of the work. For example, in Milan Kundera’s novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, an introductory text must briefly explain the story content and the many issues and ideas it touches upon. A wealthy family is involved; the male protagonist is a married playboy who, due to his charm, easily attracts the opposite sex. He simultaneously maintains relationships with his wife, mistresses, and numerous one-night-stand partners. However, his mistress does not wish to continue indefinitely in an undefined relationship and repeatedly asks him to set a deadline for fulfilling his promise. He, however, continues to evade her demands, maintaining a carefree and indifferent attitude, until the mistress finally leaves decisively—at which point he realizes that he had in fact always cared deeply about the relationship with her. This kind of “conceptual understanding information” becomes a key factor in whether readers are willing to purchase and spend time reading the work. Therefore, introductory writing must be concise, use plain language, and allow general readers to obtain such conceptual understanding within a very short time, enabling them to decide whether to accept or reject the work.
- Appreciation of works
Appreciation aims to guide readers in understanding the inner meaning of literary works and to analyze the text from its genre (formal structure) to its expressive techniques. When explaining the inner meaning of a work, the writer may include personal interpretations, but should not digress or arbitrarily apply theories that they are familiar with or favor, so as to avoid misapplication of analogies and loss of focus, thereby obscuring the text that should remain central.
Consider the following two examples of modern poetry appreciation:
(1) Li Wenqi’s appreciation of Yang Mu’s poem “Record of the Five Concubines”
Source: “Read One Poem for You Every Day”
https://www.facebook.com/cendalirit/?fref=nf
“Record of the Five Concubines” is a fragmentary work; only three poems remain in Time’s Proposition. Yang Mu adopts the technique of verse drama, modeled after Shakespeare, to portray a legend set in Taiwan. Prince Ningjing Zhu Shugui came to Taiwan during the Zheng Jing period. Later, when Zheng Keshuang succeeded, Shi Lang conquered Penghu, and Zhu Shugui decided to commit suicide as an act of loyalty to the fallen Ming dynasty. His five concubines—Yuan, Wang, Xiu, Mei, and He—chose to die with him. After burying the five concubines in Tainan, the prince calmly hanged himself.
In postcolonial theory, Frantz Fanon argues that rediscovering myths and legends prior to colonial periods can resist contemporary cultural hegemony. Thus, we see the Irish poet Yeats, whom Yang Mu admires, singing of the Celtic mythic hero Cuchulainn as a form of resistance against English rule, declaring literature as a means of asserting independence. Similarly, Yang Mu excavates legends from Taiwan’s pre–Republic of China colonial past, such as the tragedy of the Five Concubines and Prince Ningjing. This act of historical recovery reflects a poetic consciousness of Taiwanese identity and subjectivity, and a reclamation of dignity belonging to Taiwan. As Fanon states: “Perhaps such passionate research and anger can preserve and ultimately transform into subtle hope, transcending the troubled present, overcoming self-deprecation, and exploring a glorious past… Native intellectuals… decide to trace back and seek… rediscovering not shame but dignity, glory, and solemnity.”
Furthermore, at the beginning of this verse drama, Concubine Xiu mentions a “completely unusual” “poet,” likely Shen Guangwen, a literatus who lived in Taiwan during the Southern Ming period and is regarded as the “founder of classical Taiwanese literature.” However, Concubine Xiu feels confused by the poet’s language, believing that excessive metaphor is inferior to direct description of the world. From her remarks, we can see Yang Mu’s familiarity with English literature. For example, descriptions of nature such as “this fair-weather morning / leaves growing, flowers on the ground, in water / …” evoke Shakespearean passages, such as Caliban’s praise of his native island in The Tempest, or Miranda’s exclamation “O, brave new world.” Likewise, references to “grand theater” and “performing a play well” echo Shakespeare’s As You Like It: “All the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely players.” Thus, Yang Mu’s verse drama may be either a praise of Taiwan as a small island, or an expression of people living within a carefully constructed theatrical Taiwan, striving to live and perform their roles well.
(2) Xiao Xiao’s appreciation of Xiang Yang’s ten-line poem “Water Song”
Source http://hylim.myweb.hinet.net/xiangyang/ten-c1.htm
“Water Song”
The ten-line poem is divided into two sections, which is a simple contrast. The method of writing can begin with exposition, followed by transition and conclusion. In terms of response and structure, it is easy to grasp. Xiang Yang even has poems written entirely in a contrasting manner, proving that he has a rather deep commitment to the meter of regulated verse. “Water Song” writes about a “water-like” youthfulness; it writes about the gentleman’s friendship being as light as “water.” Drinking wine like water, looking twenty years forward, and looking twenty years backward—what kind of feelings would there be? Xiang Yang writes with complete contrast:
Cheers. Twenty years later
we will surely all have grown old, like fallen leaves
covering the ground. The garden path at this moment is dim and secluded
let us join hands
and wander at night, lighting lamps
casually. Twenty years earlier
we were still very young, like blossoms opening
on luxuriant branches. Beneath the tree, tomorrow morning fallen red petals will hook the rain
please listen to us by the west window
chanting, slowly singing the colors of autumn
“Cheers” and “casually” are the perfect portrayal of youthful passion and middle-aged mentality; these two simple words separately outline different situations. In youth, one should “go out at night carrying candles,” as the ancient poem says: “Life is too short by day, why not wander with a candle?” Do not wait until twenty years later, when “fallen leaves cover the ground,” to look back with longing and sorrow! In contrast, when one reaches the age where one can only act “casually,” trimming the candle at the west window and slowly singing the colors of autumn, one is facing falling red petals and rain hooks; when thinking of twenty years earlier, when “blossoms were in full bloom on luxuriant branches,” what more can one do? In a time like flowing water, in friendships like flowing water, Xiang Yang intercepts and gathers it, placing it into contrast, revealing Xiang Yang’s “precocity,” a precocious poetic imagination—at this time Xiang Yang was only twenty-two years old.
Similar contrastive poems include, for example, the contrast between the young and the old in “Rain Falls”: should one “go out and venture” or “return home”? Xiang Yang does not provide an answer. In “Fog Falls,” there is an alternation between father and son: the father is like a great tree felled by a powerful axe, gradually withdrawing, while he himself is “a small tree beginning to sprout,” eventually destined to grow. The use of contrast repeatedly appears in his poems; both “Rain Falls” and “Fog Falls” are also entirely contrastive in two sections. Even in his most recent poem “Concept,” the middle line of the two sections respectively reads “same landscape, through different channels” and “different landscapes, arising from different states of mind,” still appearing in a contrastive sentence structure. It can be said that, from beginning to end, what Xiang Yang subtly seeks to preserve is an essential essence of Chinese poetry.
(3) The author’s opinion
These two texts are, in nature, both works of appreciation. After reading them, readers will roughly have two different kinds of “feelings”:
In terms of guiding appreciation of the text and analysis of expressive techniques, the former discussion digresses widely, at one moment citing postcolonial scholar Fanon, and at another bringing in Milan Kundera, giving readers a very poor impression: the author enjoys displaying bookish knowledge and deliberately showing off learning. These sudden “erudite digressions” not only do not enhance the interpretation of the poetic text, but instead mislead readers into taking wrong paths and detours, blurring the main subject of discussion. This kind of digressive way of writing appreciation and commentary is quite popular in academia, even becoming a trend.
What readers want to know is what, from the writer’s reading comprehension, actually helps them enter the poetic text and understand its formal appearance and the aesthetic experience contained within the text—not what the writer’s “self-important” learning happens to be.
The function of appreciation writing is to assist readers in directly entering the text. In this regard, Xiao Xiao’s appreciation consistently focuses on textual interpretation and analysis: it not only explains the thematic meaning of the work—emotion and aesthetic feeling—but also provides formal analysis from the external structure, pointing out that the poem’s contrastive nature (editor’s note: parallelism of sections) is its main feature. Appreciation is a concept one level above introduction and is more specific. When writing it, the author cannot, like in an introduction, simply summarize or condense a story or express personal reading impressions; they must also, through analysis, provide useful information that assists reading, such as explaining the genre of the text and the expressive techniques it employs.
Accordingly, those who wish to write appreciation must not only possess a superior ability in textual interpretation compared to ordinary readers, but must also present structured and well-founded theoretical analysis. Moreover, these analyses must correspond to the interpretation of the text itself, rather than arbitrarily digressing, citing unrelated authorities, stitching together fragments, or showing off erudition.
- Commentary on works
Commentary on literary works involves, when facing a literary text, adopting a relatively rigorous critical methodology to evaluate and discuss the literary value of the work. Many who claim to be literary critics actually lack the technical (operational) ability and scholarly cultivation required for such evaluation and discussion. In common critical writings, as often seen by the author, either there is argument without evaluation, becoming merely a tool of social courtesy among peers—like sending wreaths and ceremonial garlands—or, at an even lower level, even the argument itself lacks structure, coherence, or supporting evidence (methodological theory), resembling aimless self-talk or self-justifying reasoning that shifts position opportunistically.
A competent critic must undergo rigorous training in literary theory, and possess a conceptual understanding and command of both Eastern and Western schools and theories of literary criticism. Then, when facing a literary work (or text), after thorough reading, they must be able to evaluate which appropriate critical theories should be adopted as the methodological basis (Methodology), or objective theoretical framework, for discussing that text.
The methodology for discussing texts can be divided into two aspects: intrinsic textual research and extrinsic contextual research, from which different approaches may be selected. The author holds that shorter texts such as poetry, prose, and short fiction should prioritize intrinsic textual research; whereas longer texts such as novels and drama should first undergo intrinsic textual research before proceeding to extrinsic contextual research.
Narrative structure, aesthetic viewpoints, rhetorical techniques, and grammatical rules are all objective theories for textual creation and analysis. On the one hand, they assist writers in enhancing linguistic expressive ability and deepening the aesthetic dimension of textual imagery; on the other hand, they help readers understand what expressive techniques are used in a work and what kind of aesthetic experience and rhetorical beauty it conveys.
(1) Commentary on modern poetry texts
In the commentary of modern poetry, in order to fully analyze and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of a text, critics may adopt the close reading method of New Criticism, analyzing and explaining line by line and stanza by stanza. In such explanation:
(1) The critic examines the poetic text using the rules of grammar and semantics, identifying possible deficiencies in its lines, such as language errors, grammatical mistakes, and incorrect parts of speech;
(2) Rhetorical theory is used to examine the formal design and expressive methods (techniques of representation) adopted in the text;
(3) Then, using hermeneutic standards, and according to the various clues provided by the text, the critic interprets the emotions and aesthetic experiences contained in the work. Of course, this part often involves aesthetics and psychology, and even fields such as sociology and philosophy.
In this evaluative part, (1) the critic may conduct a “diagnostic analytical judgment” on issues such as grammatical errors, syntactic problems, parts of speech mistakes within the text itself, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of expressive techniques, and even the selection of imagery and the construction of emotional meaning, thereby offering constructive suggestions or improvements. Generally speaking, in the context of literary competitions, when the critic assumes the role of judge and faces numerous entries, they evaluate relative quality according to their own aesthetic standards and literary cultivation, selecting works of higher readability and recommending those worthy of being highlighted to a wider readership. (2) The critic may compare the text with works of similar style by the same author; or introduce works of similar themes by contemporary poets, conducting comparative evaluations of expressive techniques and levels of aesthetic achievement.
(2) Commentary on fiction texts
For example, in the commentary on Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness, in Conrad’s own words, Heart of Darkness is: “a story of a journalist who becomes manager of an inland trading station in Africa and ends up being worshipped by the savages of a tribe.”
Most of the analyses of this novel that the author has encountered tend to focus on extrinsic contextual research, that is, the colonial period revealed in the novel, and the European white man’s economic exploitation and slave policies in the Dark Continent. Moreover, they often adopt the perspective of “postcolonial discourse,” repeatedly applying passages from Frantz Fanon or Edward Said, resulting in a showy, citation-heavy style of criticism that indulges in name-dropping.
In fact, what most readers expect from fiction commentary is a focus on the text itself. On the one hand, narratological theory should be used to analyze the narrative structure of the novel, understanding the main narrative thread, subplots, and the process of narrative development: “exposition → development → turning point → conflict → climax → resolution.” On the other hand, psychological analysis should be used to interpret the emotional transformations and fluctuations of the male and female protagonists and supporting characters within the story, helping readers understand the inner world of the protagonists.
Section 3. Popular critical ills: impressionistic and quotation-based criticism
In contemporary literary criticism in Taiwan, apart from the popular “impressionistic criticism” in the general literary field, “quotation-based criticism” is prevalent in academic circles. When facing literary works, critics frequently engage in extensive name-dropping, bringing in various famous Western literary critics’ quotations or theoretical positions. On the one hand, this demonstrates (or displays) the critic’s erudition; on the other hand, it borrows foreign authority to establish prestige, making experienced readers hesitant to question or challenge it. The problem with these two popular forms of criticism is that the former is subjective and superficial, while the latter merely repeats others’ ideas and lacks theoretical autonomy.
When analyzing the poetic quality and expressive techniques of modern poetry, rhetorical and grammatical theory is sufficient; when analyzing the aesthetic realm of a work, principles from aesthetics, semantics, and hermeneutics are sufficient. Arbitrarily citing famous figures often leads to digression and obscures the original focus of discussion, making readers increasingly confused. As for the philosophical implications embedded in modern poetry texts, this belongs to questions of imagery, style, or spirit—where interpretations differ from person to person, and no single definitive conclusion can easily be reached. Impressionistic critics most enjoy elaborating on precisely this aspect of poetic ambiguity, where no fixed answer exists.
Many domestic writers who rely on impressionistic and quotation-based criticism—pseudo-scholars and semi-scholars alike—often deliberately cite fragments of famous sayings to support their arguments or display erudition, turning critical writing into a kind of theatrical performance. However, such quotations from authorities are mostly of little help in interpreting the text. What readers actually want to know is: where exactly does the aesthetic value of the work lie? Through what expressive techniques is it conveyed? Rather than reading a mass of famous quotations compiled by critics. Otherwise, this will deviate from textual understanding, which is precisely what the author calls “obscuring the focus,” because full discussion and close analysis of the text should be the true “focus” of poetic criticism. Any digressive citations and discussions only lead readers into a maze, making them repeatedly hit walls and become increasingly bewildered.
