please translate this to Persian
Notice spots that are weird. Weird diction. Weird characters. Weird repetitions. Weird spots in which the writer pauses and gives a lot of attention to something you think is insignificant at first.

Bad readers who don’t read between the lines either (a) don’t notice the weird spots because they were zombie-reading, or (b), they notice it and say, “That’s weird,” and then simply plow ahead without trying to explain why the odd detail appears there. So, if you notice the writer spends six paragraphs describing a simple lamp-post—that’s a pretty good sign there’s more to it than just a lamp-post. Maybe it’s a symbol. Maybe it’s foreshadowing. Maybe it’s a leitmotif.
If you notice a character has a strange name, “Imelda Goodbody,” or whatnot, stop and consider it. If it’s weird that the character is always wearing a particular color or type of outfit or carrying a rose, stop and consider it.

Every time you locate and mark such a weird detail, pause and try and explain why you think the author spends so much time focusing on that bit. Odds are, that will force you to read between the lines. If you can come up with an explanation as to why the author chose to spend to pages on the lamp-post (is there light-symbolism here about knowledge versus ignorance?), or why he chose “Goodbody” as a character’s last name (is he suggesting she is particularly voluptuous and seductive?), or why she carries a rose (is she a hopeless romantic? Is he foreshadowing that she will encounter the florist from chapter two?), then you will start to read between the lines—i.e., interpreting what’s going on beyond just the surface.

There are many tools for getting at objective meaning. The first and most important tool is common sense. Go into a text assuming that the writer wants to convey a definite meaning, and that he or she will not try to hide it. In many cases, the author will tell you. I’ll use as an example the Prologue to Romeo And Juliet.

Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

Shakespeare here tells us exactly what the play concerns; the consequences of civil strife which only a tragedy (“death-mark’d love” in a double sense, since not only do they die to the world but as suicides their souls are damned) can end. It is not a play about true love; it’s a play about the right ordering of a state.

There are a few common-place hurdles besides references and intellectual context. The further back we go in time, the more likely that words change in meaning. To take one example, the word “silly” in Elizabethan English will likely have the meaning of “deserving of compassion, pity, or sympathy” or “helpless or weak” or several other comparable meanings, quite different from a current meaning. A regular dictionary will not serve you well here; this is where you need to learn how to use the Oxford English Dictionary, which any good-sized library will have either in physical form or available on line. It is a dictionary on historical principles, in which the first meaning listed is the earliest, illustrated with relevant quotations. Sometimes even a well-annotated edition of a play, poem, or novel will not offer you guidance on the exact shadings of a word. Another very important example: a key word in Hamlet is “melancholy” used both by Hamlet to describe himself and by Claudius to describe Hamlet. The Elizabethan meaning, a personality dominated by black bile, is a fairly precise medical term in the type of medical understanding of Shakespeare’s time and quite different from the much more attenuated modern meaning. (For more detail, Google “theory of humors”.)

Another skill is to look for patterns in the images used by the writer, or an organizing image. One famous example is in George Eliot’s Middlemarch, Chapter 27 (Middlemarch - Chapter 27, first full paragraph) in which the candle in the pier glass describes not only the consciousness of the character, but the way in which the novelist organizes events in meaningful ways. It’s even richer than that

To summarize:
Meaning in a literary work is objective, and defined by the writer.
Go in assuming that the writer will, often directly, tell you what he or she means.
Analyze a work in terms of the intellectual context of its time. For instance, Freudian readings of Shakespeare often directly contradict the plain sense of the work.
Look for organizing and repeated images.
Be careful about the individual meanings of key words. If the meaning of a word in a passage seems opaque—check notes if you have them, or use the OED.

One of the options I like, especially when it's a case of the archaic phrasing being so different from how we use words now, is to find a good BBC movie adaptation of the book. Sometimes seeing the phrases in action can clear up a meaning, and the BBC is notoriously careful with original meanings vs current ones.
For Shakespeare I suggest adaptations by Kennett Brannagh.

“Those who fail to re-read are condemned to read the same story everywhere” - attrib. Roland Barthes

Another way of breaking down a literary work is simply to read it more than once, and the second time through read it slowly with a hi-liter. Hi-lite elements that are repetitive and pay attention to the language of the story.
I re-read Stephen King’s Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption this way in preparation to teach it to a class. I had read the work many times before, but reading it slowly I noticed—for the first time—how often King uses the word hope and how much of the narrative revolves around the idea of hope. This is not incidental, and once this becomes apparent it changes how you understand the story. Hope is the central theme, not escape, not freedom, not justice. Hope.

Reading is the sowing, Rereading is the harvest". - Johny Uzan

I’d suggest trying to keep track of the structure of a novel. This can be more elusive, but most authors breakup their novel’s into chapters and “books”. These breaks are not done willy-nilly. Often, they are crucial.
خطر کمی اسپویل وداع با اسلحه در پاراگراف زیر
Ernest Hemingway breaks up A Farewell to Arms into five sections. It is no mistake that at the end of each section, the main characters lose something. The losses become steadily worse in each section, culminating in the worst loss of all at the end of the book. Again, this is purposeful. Structure is one of the most powerful ways in which writers convey meaning and intention.

Start by reading the title. It sounds obvious, but a lot of people skip the title, which can give you an idea. ALWAYS analyse the title! Mention key words, similarities from prior texts or comparisons to other authors or the themes that arise from it.


Also note how well rounded and believable some characters are while others are mere caricatures, or mouthpieces for the authors message; this is very evident in a lot of Charles Dicken’s work. Also note the names the author gives to people places and houses.

As an example, Daniel Defoe’s ROBINSON CRUSOE is arguably the original novel, and if it isn’t, it’s certainly an early one. A good start would be to learn what was going on politically and culturally in the United Kingdom in 1719, and what was going on in the literary world (poetry was already invented, even if the novel hadn’t yet). Then learn who Defoe was on a personal level before he penned CRUSOE. Then you read it, and marvel at how racial attitudes have changed (for the better!) in 300 years, and find how people responded to the work at the time. Then read about how it is received now, and learn neat terms like “epistolary” and “didactic,” and give yourself six pretension points. Then do it again for Alexander Dumas’ THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO.

How can I understand literature if I find it very difficult to understand?
... And if it comes to it, which it has for me many times, read aloud to yourself. Do different voices for the characters in the dialogue. A psychologist or neuroscientist could explain to you why this works so well, but all I can give you is my experience-based advice that it does.

It demands a deep understanding of continental philosophy, and indeed all philosophy. True: because the question of meaning is a profoundly philosophical question, and philosophers have developed some of the most powerful resources for thinking about meaning. Moreover, though: the meaningful of literature is intimately bound up with the history of philosophy, and can never really be separated from it. But—-and this is very important—- literary theory is not “just” philosophy, not even just “continental philosophy,” but something else, even though the cutting edge of continental philosophy, for essential and not merely institutional reasons, tends to converge with literary theory. Literary theory goes beyond “continental philosophy,” or at least remains irreducible to it, when it thinks the “event” of singular literary texts rather than simply regarding literary texts as exemplary for philosophical truth.
It demands a deep understanding of history, though not an encyclopedic knowledge of historical facts. Literature is a historical phenomenon, and can never be understood outside this horizon—- even if it is a mistake to reduce the literary text to its historical context.
It demands a knowledge of the history of literature, and of art and other cultural activities.
It demands knowledge of everything… There is nothing that it is not somehow related to textual and literary meaning… Not even higher mathematics, set theory, differential calculus…
It demands knowledge of the “canon” of literary theory as well as the scholarly debates surrounding it. This, in fact, is already too much…
اضافه کنم چون ادبیات سروکارش با انسان هاست حتما به دانش روانشناسی و رفتارشناسی انسانها هم نیازه. هم روانشناسی نوین مثلا روانشناسی اجتماعی، اقتصاد رفتاری، روانشناسی عصبی و ... و هم روانشناسی قدیمی که فلاسفه در قالب فلسفه بهش میپرداختن

Consider the elements and wonder what the author meant, what types of things stood out and why. See if the words have any type of connection to any other words or meanings. Then re read the work. Jot down the ideas and put them in an order that connects them to each other when necessary. This could be done as a mind map.