A New Dimension of Analysis

By Sammi Davis

I. Love. Rhetorical analysis. Yes, I’m that girl who loves mulling over passages and poems to squeeze out every rhetorical maneuver and symbolic significance. Did the author casually create a setting of a woman in a room with “barred windows” and a “gate at the head of the stairs,” or is this an intentional comment by the author on women’s entrapment in societal oppression in late 19th century America where men stripped women of their autonomy? Yep folks, this is how my brain works.

When I heard original manuscripts of certain works I had studied throughout my three years at KU were on display at The British Library, I knew I had to check them out. My sweet classmates came with me so I could have a little book geek moment in front of a copy of Mrs. Dalloway in Virgina Woolf’s handwriting. Sadly, this work had just been put back in archives when we went, but there were still over pieces of the exhibit I was dying to see. As I said earlier, most of these texts were ones that I had read over and over again, each time with more highlighted annotations than the last. I was fully expecting to walk into the exhibit hall, glance at the wrinkling yellow pages in a moment of awe, and get on with seeing the rest of London. However, this was not the case.

My attitude of “been there, read that” was humbled immediately as my mind flooded with questions about the edition of “The Importance of Being Earnest” in Wilde’s handwriting. Is this how Wilde wrote? Words underlined for emphasis or scribbled out entirely? Speech bubbles with circled words that rearrange that interrupt the ongoing text? Why did he write in such a large font and in a large unlined paper? I never knew such a renowned book could look so… unpolished. I thought I knew everything about the satirical, cheeky play. But, here I was, standing in front of a single page of it and rethinking what I thought I knew about Oscar Wilde’s play. Adding just the element of original formatting gave me more material to analyze and therefore deepen my understanding of the work and author.

My experience in the exhibit was nothing like I thought it would be. I felt challenged, inspired, breathless, and humbled. If you haven’t figured it out by now, I am quite a deep, introspective thinker, so here is my main takeaway from my time at The British Library: Learning is dimensional.

You can read a book cover to cover and say you know it. You can study the historical context and say you know it. You can travel all the way to London and see an original transcript in a museum and say you know it, but the reality is you’ve only explored one dimension of it. I can mistakenly look at learning as a to-do list to check off when I scratch the surface of a work rather than seeing learning as an invitation to explore deeply through varying lenses.