narratology and my thoughts...

To be honest, after reading most of the literary critics so far I've been unsure if I agreed with their statements and arguments. Tzvetan Todorov's essay was different. It made sense to me. His idea of "narratology" where we study the narrative itself and divide it into the study of syntax, theme, and rhetoric. Todorov is saying that the story is what is being narrated and the plot represents this logical sequence of events occurring. By studying plot, although he states that literature is not just "plot alone", we don't discover what the story means but what literature means. Narratology, at least how I understood it, is the interpretation of literature in order to understand literature as a whole, on a grand scale. It makes sense. Shouldn't different pieces of writing be able to construct themes that can transcend into other writing and be common in all literature? I think up to this point I can connect on with Todorov the best concerning literary criticism because he stated things clearly and he gave good, solid examples. His use of "Decameron" helped me to follow his steps in critiquing the plot.

Often when I read I get wrapped up in the story going on and I don't take the time to critic and analyze different aspects of it. I love reading and losing myself in the story unfolding on my lap. I guess what I'm trying to say is I understand the need for literary criticism but I don't want to let it steal away my pleasure of simply enjoying a piece of writing. Maybe this makes me seem naive or even insensible to some of the theorists we've been reading. But don't you just want to read for fun sometimes? Is this okay? I don't want to lose my love for reading because I feel that I must always be critiquing the work before me. I'm not saying I think that doing this is wrong; literary criticism is definitely a good thing in many ways. I'm just not quite sold on the fact that I want to always be in that mindset when reading. Does any of this make sense? I'm feel like I'm just rambling...