Teaching Students the Elements of Analysis

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Teaching Students the Elements of Analysis"

Podcast: Hillsdale College K-12 Classical Education Podcast
Episode Date: November 17, 2025
Host: Scott Bertram
Guest: Dr. Justin Jackson, Chair and Professor of English, Hillsdale College

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Overview

This episode centers on teaching analytical skills in literature, with a focus on Dr. Justin Jackson’s forthcoming book, Elements of Analysis. The conversation explores the persistent challenges both students and teachers face when engaging with literature at a deep, analytical level—particularly the gap between recognizing a work’s thematic vision and understanding the methods by which an author achieves it. Dr. Jackson explains why close analysis is essential to a classical education and describes practical approaches for educators aiming to cultivate true literary analysis in their students, rather than mere plot summary or moralizing.

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Key Discussion Points

Origins and Purpose of "Elements of Analysis"

[02:01 – 06:56]

• Dr. Jackson describes his 20 years at Hillsdale, observing students’ strengths in writing and organization but a lingering deficiency in genuine textual analysis.
• Recognizing this, he and his colleague Dr. Dutton Carney began creating handouts and, ultimately, a concise handbook intended for high school and college students.
• He emphasizes the goal: "If we can get these students in 9th through 12th grade, then they're going to be prepared for this and we can take them yet to another level once they're in college." — Jackson [05:07]

Why Students Struggle With Literary Analysis

[06:56 – 13:16]

• Literature Serves as a Tool: Too often, literature is treated as a vehicle for something else—history, cultural study, or simply moral instruction—rather than as art to be explored for its own sake.
• Fear of ‘Being Wrong’: Students fear risking an interpretation, wanting certainty about "the right answer" or the author's intention.
  • "Until you become an expert in the art of necromancy, I don't know that you're going to figure that out." — Jackson [08:00]
• Analysis vs. Summary: Many students stop at giving the "aboutness" of a poem or story, confusing summary with analysis.

The Nature and Practice of Close Analysis

[13:16 – 19:02]

• The book rejects "tricks" and decoder rings in favor of cultivating analytical habits: "What we just simply try to teach students is how to ask questions of the text." — Jackson [13:33]
• Dr. Jackson illustrates close analysis using Emily Dickinson's poem ("Because I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me"), focusing on the significance of the word "kindly."
  • "Kindly means two things simultaneously. It means pleasantly, graciously, perhaps... But kindly also means by kind, naturally." — Jackson [14:47]
• The essence of analysis is: "How does a single word, image, line... become a vehicle for a vision of that whole poem?" — Jackson [15:38]
• Analogy to math teaching: Getting the right answer is less important than showing the logical path to the answer.
  • "What I care about is, how did you get there?" — Jackson [16:23]

The Role of Analysis in Classical and Other Schools

[19:02 – 23:39]

• Classical schools have revived great content and moral/virtue-centered curricula but sometimes still treat literature as a means rather than an end.
• Dr. Jackson sees Elements of Analysis as a supplement, adaptable for classical, public, or private schools, designed to help all students treat a text as something valuable "for itself."
• On teaching literature: "It is not to try to pull out those platforms from anything. It's really a question of how do you enrich what it is that you're doing and then get students to maybe really figure out why they Love this literature." — Jackson [22:56]

Choosing Texts That Teach Analysis

[25:08 – 28:43]

• When selecting works for analysis, seek those by authors who "teach students how to read": Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Melville, and Emily Dickinson among them.
• Ovid is highlighted as particularly effective for instructing analysis:
  • "If anyone's listening out there and you're teaching his Metamorphoses, please don't teach it as an encyclopedia of myths... He wants to know what makes you tick." — Jackson [25:34]
• The mark of great literature is not only the depth of its message but the subtlety and complexity of its craft.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the fear of analysis:
  "They're afraid that analysis destroys things. They're afraid that if you pull something apart, there's no goal to that. But the goal to analysis is to... enter into the world of the author, then in some ways you're just going to have to risk being wrong." — Jackson [10:36]

• On good prose and the challenge of shifting to analytical writing:
  "When you have to do a new type of writing and analytical writing, your prose is shot. And some of them don't want to give that up. They like their adjectives and adverbs." — Jackson [12:22]

• On the limitations of didactic readings:
  "If literature just simply plays the vehicle for those things [virtue, wisdom, etc.], then we just treat literature superficially. And I think we do dishonor to these great authors in doing that." — Jackson [07:21]

• On the real aim of analysis:
  "It's not what the author says, but it's how does he do it?" — Jackson [17:22]

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Timestamps of Key Segments

• Origins of the Book & Analytical Deficiencies: [02:01 – 06:56]
• Diagnosis of Analytical Deficit: [07:10 – 09:29]
• The Risks and Rewards of Analysis: [09:29 – 11:37]
• Why Analytical Prose is a Struggle: [11:38 – 13:16]
• What Close Analysis Looks Like in Practice: [13:30 – 16:19]
• Craft vs. Message – The ‘How’ of Literature: [16:20 – 19:02]
• Supplementing Classical & Other Education Approaches: [19:02 – 23:39]
• Choosing the Right Texts to Learn Analysis: [25:08 – 28:43]

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Takeaways for Teachers and Students

• Analysis involves digging into how a piece of literature achieves its effect, not just what it says or what its moral lesson is.
• Teachers should encourage risk-taking in student interpretations, as long as they are thoughtfully reasoned and grounded in the text.
• The greatest literary works function as both subject and teacher, providing not just content but also models from which students can learn close reading and analytical skills.
• Elements of Analysis is crafted to be accessible, pragmatic, and directly supportive of teacher-led classrooms, aiming to supplement—not supplant—existing curricula.

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Episode's Closing Note

Dr. Jackson concludes that while moral and thematic readings are important, the lasting engagement with literature comes from analyzing craft and detail—encouraging students to ask, "How does this move me?" and "How did the author do it?" This book, and the teaching philosophy behind it, aim to empower students to become attentive, thoughtful readers across genres and traditions.

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[This summary was composed for educators, parents, and students interested in classical education or seeking practical insights on teaching literary analysis.]

Transcript

[Scott Bertram]

Hey there, it's Scott Bertram, host of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. On this week's program, it's Veterans Day Week, we spend some time with Mark Boyer, the William P. Harris Chair in Military History here at Hillsdale College. He talks about a recent essay on the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. Jason Gerke, assistant professor of History here at Hillsdale, talks about his recent writings on the nature of America first foreign policy, and the Iranian airstrike specifically. And Tom Connor, professor emeritus of history here at Hillsdale, takes us on a tour of the Luxembourg American Cemetery. All that this week on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Find it at podcast hillsdale Edu or wherever you get your audio.

[Dr. Justin Jackson]

Welcome to The Hillsdale College K12 classical education podcast, bringing you insight into classical education and its unique emphasis on human virtue and moral character, responsible citizenship, content, rich curricula and teacher led classrooms. Now your host, Scott Bertram.

[Scott Bertram]

Thanks for listening. The Hillsdale College K12 Classical Education Podcast is part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. More episodes at podcast hillsdale.edu or wherever you get your audio. You also can find more information on topics and ideas discussed on this show at our website, k12 hillsdale.edu.

[Interviewer / Host]

We'Re joined today by Dr. Justin Jackson. He is chair and professor of English and Idrie Seward Kennedy, Chair of English at Hillsdale College. Dr. Jackson, thanks for joining us.

[Dr. Justin Jackson]

Thanks for having me Talking today about.

[Interviewer / Host]

Elements of Analysis, which is both a topic and the title of our upcoming book from Dr. Jackson, tell us about the origins of Elements of Analysis.

[Dr. Justin Jackson]

Sure. So I've been teaching at Hillsdale College for 20 years now, and as your listeners know, we're a great books college. We don't have any remedial composition courses that freshmen have to take or if you get a certain score on the sat, you have to go take remedial. We don't do that. So we don't have composition courses. Students write in all of their courses on campus, but the English department has been tasked with introducing students to college level writing, which in many ways means kind of an analytical writing. And we only teach it in the great books. So it's been 20 years since I've been here and the students have gotten much better, which in some ways adds to a frustration because you see all of the skills they bring to the table. Their writing is pretty darn clean. Organization skills like these students have been trained well. But the one thing my colleague Dutton Carney, who's the co author with the book, the one thing that we've discovered is they just don't know how to do analysis. These are wicked smart students. Most of them sit in my office and they're smarter than I am. But if you give them a poem and go do something with it, just say, just tell me which words you think are really important here and explain why. Like, how are those particular words a vehicle for the poem's moral vision? All they can tell you is the poem's moral vision. And then maybe they'll quote, you know, Aristotle or give you some history lesson. We've always discovered they have a tendency to be allergic to the text and wanting to work through it. And so we've been dealing with that for 20 years. And gosh, Dutton and I have been. I think we've spent the last 12 years on his porch having cigars and kind of lamenting wicked smart students who can't do this. But when the students get it, they get it. And then, I mean, you want to talk about watching young people kind of blow up with regards to that, that sort of intellectual fortitude once they realize, oh, I can enter into this author's world and there's real beauty here. And now I can actually explain how it moved me so. And I can start to explain kind of the craft of the poet or the dramatist or the novelist here. See, it's empowering for them, and they've entered into a new world. And so Dutton and I decided, okay, enough with the handouts, because sometimes students won't read your handouts. Let's. Let's put all of this stuff together that we've been doing together. So Dutton and I have been exchanging handouts for, like I said, 12 years. Let's put this stuff together, and let's put it in book form that we think could be helpful. At first, it was just going to be Dutton and I using it in our classes. We just wanted it in book form because students will read a book, and then we have section parts to it. So if we want, we can tell students, look at section 1.1.2A. That's really nice to be able to write in the margin. Yeah, like, this will help you, because it's elements of analysis, which, you know, we just kind of shamelessly steal from Strunk and White's Elements of Style, because that was handbook for Cornell University. And so Dutton and I fancied this being a handbook for our courses. So that really was the impetus of it. And then I started working more with the K through 12 program here, and I would get teachers who were teaching 9th graders through 12th graders asking me, like, how do you do this? How do you do this? And so Dutton and I said, well, let's craft that book because it will help us out. If we can get these students in 9th through 12th grade, then they're going to be prepared for this and we can take them yet to another level once they're in college. So the book's really designed for ninth grade through college age. I actually have a former student who's been out of education for a while, decided to go to grad school in Oxford, and he said, I'm a little rusty here. Do you have any books you would recommend to do this? And I said, hey, here. Here's my book. Like, read through it. And he's extremely helpful. And then he had fellow grad students like, here, because they wanted to know, like, what are we supposed to. Because much of grad school, you know, is a little higher and more theoretical. We can call it ideological if we like, but you have a historical position or a philosophical position or a cultural position, and oftentimes we just forget about the poetry. But I think some of the professors who are trained in these schools, they learned how to do close analysis. They just forgot to teach close analysis. Yeah. And so that's what Dutton and I, that's what we wanted to get back to. So its target audiences is 9th graders through undergrads and teachers. We try to make it very teacher friendly. It's not a complete program. We try to keep it at 100 pages. Like, just use this. Maybe it'll be helpful. Maybe the language. Maybe some of the examples we give to you will look helpful. So we do much of what Strunk and White will do. Here's a good example. Here's a bad example. Here's why. The weaker example is a weak example. Just precisely what they're doing. So that's what a lot of the book is, is just kind of parsing these paragraphs to show teachers and students, oh, here's what the student's doing here. Here's how the student could make it stronger. And we just learned over the years that this. The students who actually put forth the effort to read the handouts, to do those things, they actually. They strike gold at a certain point.

[Interviewer / Host]

We have wonderful students. We have curious students.

[Dr. Justin Jackson]

Oh, my goodness. Yes.

[Interviewer / Host]

And I'm just wondering if looking and trying to look at this problem, we'll call it. Is there a diagnosis for the reason of the. I'll call it a deficiency of analysis?

[Dr. Justin Jackson]

I think there are maybe two or Three reasons, I think. One, literature always seems to have to serve something else, which is a professor of literature. That just irritates me to death. It either has to be a cultural artifact or it has to be a demonstration of some historical moment, or it has to be a vehicle. And this is where the classical schools come in. It has to be a vehicle for virtue and moral. Moral vision and wisdom. Again, I don't. I'm not opposed to any of those things, but when the literature just simply plays the vehicle for those things, then we just treat literature superficially. And I think we do dishonor to these great authors in doing that. So that would be, you know, that would be kind of the weakness. That's one is I think literature is always made to serve something else. And it makes perfect sense. I mean, we have brilliant political courses on the courses in the politics department on Shakespeare. Brilliant, brilliant. But it's meditating on politics. And what. That doesn't mean they're not reading Shakespeare closely, but they actually have a goal in mind there. And again, I'm just not so sure as a teacher of literature and especially of young people first engaging with literature first, they just need to learn how to enter into that author's world and it turns out, risk being wrong. That's the second weakness is students, they have two fears. One, what's the author's intention? I mean, I like to tell my students, until you become an expert in the art of necromancy, I don't know that you're going to figure that out. After spending years and years studying all of the author's works, reading biographies, reading history, the best you can do is maybe give the most probable reading. But I don't even know that that's the goal. If we're doing. And look, my kids go to classical schools, so if we are doing wisdom and virtue and courage and strength, yes, I say yes to all of it. But sometimes that's really difficult in literature. And I think sometimes what we do is we just want to just kind of, I don't know, plaster over all the difficulties and make it just a clear moral vision. And I don't know what. That's what the authors are doing. So I think that's also. Students want to know the author's intention, and if they can't, they want to pull back, because then that's their second fear. Their second fear is I'm just making it up. Yeah, I'm just projecting something of myself onto the text.

[Interviewer / Host]

So I don't know if it's a certain Sort of mind. But I had this conversation with someone recently about frustration with this sort of approach. Meaning if you go into a literature class and you study a poem or you study a book, maybe there's a certain kind of mind that says, I want an absolute answer. I want to know if I'm right or wrong when I say this. And in lots of great literature that's just not possible. You can't get to a point where this is absolutely correct or this is absolutely not correct and sort of that in between where you might be right. I think that can be frustrating at times.

[Dr. Justin Jackson]

And look, I think it's also a disposition for conservative students because conservative students, they don't want to be. They know they're not experts. So I'll just rely on somebody else. Okay, I suppose that's a disposition. But how are we going to grow intellectually if we're not challenging? So, you know, in my younger days when I was teaching this stuff, I love to give them like readings from Aristotle because that makes them uncomfortable because their readings are very different from Aristotle, my readings are different from Aristotle. And some of them will, they'll just raise their hand and they'll say, I think I'm more right than he is. And I would say, good for you. You could be very well wrong. But think an 18 year old willing to. And not again, not disrespecting him, but to say, I can read the same things he's reading and I'm not reading it in the same way. And I found certain details that would make his reading really problematic. And I would love to know how he would react to these. That's what we're looking for. Because I think a love of literature, which is really what we're trying to teach in this book, how to love it and do analysis. Because that's another thing that the students come in with is they were afraid that analysis destroys things. They're afraid that if you pull something apart, there's no goal to that. But the goal to analysis is to. I think if the, if the goal of analysis is to enter into the world of the, of the author, then in some ways you're just going to have to risk being wrong. I've been wrong so many times, I can't tell you. Right. I mean, I'll look. I only write in my books. In pencil.

[Interviewer / Host]

Yeah.

[Dr. Justin Jackson]

Because I discovered what I thought at 25. It's like, oh my goodness, what an. What an idiot. What an ounce. This is just a terrible read. Not an inc. So are there incorrect readings? Yes, if you mess up the plot, the chronology of events, sure, but that's not what you're talking about. What you're talking about is just I see these details, and it's kind of all right, so sometimes it's fun. When you get seniors in college, it really is a matter of these are all correct readings, but is there a reading outside of these that can maybe contain all of those? And how do we do this? So the freshmen coming in, they're just a little fearful of it. And then the biggest thing, the biggest apprehension they have, and their biggest weakness is actually built off of their greatest strength. And their greatest strength is they've all been educated very well at either their charter schools, public schools, private schools, home schools. They've been educated well. They write well. Students in my class write really well. It turns out when you have to do a new type of writing and analytical writing, your prose is shot. And some of them don't want to give that up. They like their adjectives and adverbs, and I like to show them you can add that in. But let's write first with nouns and verbs, because that's the language of logic. Adjective and adverbs is kind of the language of rhetoric. Get the logic down first, which means get that analysis down. Find those connections for us, then you can pretty it up. And it's a struggle for them to see their prose not working the way in which it ought to work. And again, that's a tough one because you're asking them, do something new and it's going to mess up your prose style. And they don't like that so much.

[Interviewer / Host]

Talking with Dr. Justin Jackson. His upcoming book is called Elements of Analysis. We've talked a little about this around this, maybe reading closely, close analysis, entering into the world of the author. Do you want to say more about what you mean by close analysis?

[Dr. Justin Jackson]

Yeah, Well, I mean, that's kind of the question. So what we don't do is we don't show tricks. You know, there was a book, oh, gosh, I don't know, 20 years ago, how to Read like an English Professor. It was something like that title, Very good book, but it was kind of a decoder ring. They used these tricks. We don't teach tricks. What we just simply try to teach students is how to ask questions of the text and how to come at the text, not as a cultural artifact or historical, though it is clearly. But to ask what is so significant about this single detail, that can be it. So I'll just give you one example. Emily Dickinson's poem. And I'll just give one line. Although I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me. I'll just stop there. I just want to focus on one word. And the rest of the poem really takes you through the character's travels through time. The playground and the sun setting. You feel this sense of transience till it finally gets to the grave site and the tombs and whatnot. It's really weird. It's both beautiful and haunting simultaneously. All right, so there's my aboutness of the book. That's just. We'll just call that interpretation. That's very general. Our students love to do this. Essentially, it's the plot of the poem, and they think they've given me some grand insight. And it's like, well, no, that's what the poem says, and that's what it does. All right, so what would close analysis look like? It would look like kindly. Although I could not stop for death, he kindly. Well, that's a really. He kindly stopped for me. All right, so the adverb that goes with stopped kindly means two things simultaneously. It means pleasantly, graciously, perhaps, which There's a vision of death. I think it's a deeply Christian vision of death. It takes my students back a little bit, but I think that's what. But kindly also means by kind, naturally.

[Interviewer / Host]

Yes.

[Dr. Justin Jackson]

So then what's that saying about death? That it is natural to be pleasant, to be gracious. One word. One word and that single word. So if. If I were to describe analysis, it would be, how does a single word, image, line, maybe three lines, how does that become a vehicle for a vision of that whole poem? What's the way in which it does that? You could say, well, that's asking a lot of those lines. Okay, fine. Well, let's find two or three sets of lines and to show the way in which the particular becomes a vehicle for the whole. That really is that sort of fundamental principle here. I like to tell students, like, I don't fight with them in their papers. Analysis is not debate. I tell them, argumentation is not debate. You may use argumentation in debate, but argumentation is not debate. So I tell them, I'm not here to debate you with your paper. I accept your thesis. Just know that I accept. I'm not fighting with you over it. Hopefully it's actually an argument, not just plot summary.

[Interviewer / Host]

Right.

[Dr. Justin Jackson]

Hopefully it's not. Odysseus is a clever man. There's my thesis, like, well, okay, I guess, but let's just say it's argumentative. I always tell them, I don't care what your analysis is, what your argument is. What I care about is, how did you get there? In many ways, it reminds me of whenever I would take math in my youth. Every good math teacher I had, you would hand in your test, and maybe you got the answer wrong, but they figured out, oh, conceptually, you nailed it. Computationally, you messed up here great. You still get nine out of ten. It's like, but I got the answer wrong. I understand, but conceptually, you're on the right track. That's what we're looking for for the students when they write about literature and stay away from analysis. They want the right answer. But what if I tell them, I grant you the right answer. Now show me how you've gotten to that. So that's it. It's not. Maybe this is another way to put analysis. It's not necessarily what the author is saying, though you can't avoid that, especially if we're talking about a moral vision, cosmic vision, or even, God forbid, an immoral or amoral vision. So we can't leave that aside. But it's not what the author says, but it's how does he do it? There's another kind of metaphor that we use. It's not the what, it's the how. Another technique that we use. Show us the craft of author. How is the author doing this sort of thing? Those are very different questions than kind of plot questions or moral vision questions. Those are the questions of just saying, how does this thing work? And again, I think it gets us to the beauty of these things. For anyone who likes to, I don't know, mess around with computers or small engines, you don't just sit there and go, man, this. So I have a Honda lawnmower, and it's. It's incredible. I had some problems with it. So it was like, okay, I get to take it apart. I was so excited. And what a thing of beauty that is. It's like, I can appreciate it from the outside. Yeah, I can tell my friends buy a Honda motor. But after having worked on it, it's like, oh, this is a real. In fact, it intimidated me because it maybe was a little going. Going to read a Honda is somewhat, for me, like reading to fix a Honda motors, like reading Chaucer. I'm intimidated.

[Interviewer / Host]

Yeah.

[Dr. Justin Jackson]

It's like, there's just too much stuff going on here. I don't know that I'm actually worthy to be reading through those things. So, again, it's a matter of pulling things apart to see how it works to get a sense of, oh, that's why this thing moves me so much. So, you know, analysis, it's a. You'll notice that we don't say close reading because it means something very particular. That's why we step back with a close analysis because it really is just getting students to look at the particular details and not the overall whole. We assume they're going to get that overall whole, but how do we get them into the text a little bit more?

[Interviewer / Host]

In elements of analysis, you seem to say that private schools, charter schools, classical schools have helped in ways to mend the mistakes that perhaps other schools have made with literature. Can the book help to supplement that work that's already been done?

[Dr. Justin Jackson]

Yeah. So one of the things, I mean, I think the primary thing that classical schools have done is they've reintroduced great works like they have content rich material. Well, okay, well, if you have content rich material, then I think it's almost a crime not to have students, if these are Honda engines, let them have some fun with it. Right. Okay. So I think that's the first correction, is to say we give them content rich material. But now the next step is, right, but let's do something with it. So, you know, sometimes students from, you know, public schools say something like, you know, oh, and I hope I don't make anyone angry here, but, oh, here's, you know, Shirley Jackson's the Lottery. Like, how would you do analysis on this? I wouldn't. I mean, it's fine. It's just a very surface level, kind of allegorical meditation on things. There's just. Is it a good work? Sure. And would I teach it in a high school literature class? Sure. But, you know, it's a. I don't want to. I like Briggs and Stratton's, but it's a Briggs and Stratton compared to a Honda. So that would be it. So giving them that content rich, I think is helpful. The other thing that public schools I saw like to do was they wanted to. And again, I just, I don't disagree with this, but I think it's secondary and not primary. They wanted the texts to be something of a springboard for a student to meditate on their own personal journey or voyage. But then look what happens. Literature becomes a vehicle for some sort of. And I don't mean this in a pejorative way, but some sort of egoistic analysis or an egoistic presentation of oneself. Okay. Fortunately, a lot of school, public schools have gotten away from that now. All right, the other thing that Public schools like to do, and it's related to that personal. And this is maybe where they've shifted, is a sort of presentism. How does it speak to us now? How to speak to us in the year now? Okay, so I think in all those ways, charter schools have really helped to kind of enter the conversation, I think in very important ways. And how. Because they want to teach very traditional things. Wisdom, virtue, courage, strength. Fantastic. What we've started to notice is that our students come in there being able to detect all those things in these pieces of literature, but that's kind of their end goal. So rather than a presentism, they kind of give us a form of traditionalism. But even that form of traditionalism, which is going to be obviously a much better reading, I think, of the piece of literature than presentism. Nevertheless, if your only focus is on traditionalism and the virtues, we still kind of wonder, right? But is the literature only a vehicle for that? And let's just say all that's true with the wisdom and the virtue, then the next question is simple. Well, how does the text do that? And it turns out with great authors, as soon as you ask that, how does it do it? It's like, oh, it's really true. I just spent an hour and a half on Dostoevsky mapping out his moral vision. It's complicated stuff. I mean, it's really complicated. You can get there, but it can't just simply be. His moral vision is an emptying of the ego and you ought to repent. Of course that's his moral vision. Of course it is. How he gets there, though, that's a wild ride. So that's it. So we think we can supplement the classical school, obviously. I think we can supplement the public schools very easily, because it doesn't matter as long as you treat the literature as primary. Is the end in and of itself, which really is traditional liberal arts. The study of something for itself, not that thing, is a vehicle for something else, Be it traditionalism or presentism, it doesn't matter to me. Historical, cultural. But to work through that thing in and of itself, we think that can help anyone from ninth grade to college, no matter if public, private, Christian, humanistic, it doesn't matter. We think it's a nice supplementary text to all of those things. And that really is how we designed it. It is not to try to pull out those platforms from anything. It's really a question of how do you enrich what it is that you're doing and then get students to maybe really figure out why they Love this literature. Because sometimes what will happen is I love this literature. Why? Well, because it conforms with my vision of the world.

[Interviewer / Host]

Correct. Right.

[Dr. Justin Jackson]

I like that vision. Therefore, there it is. Right. So people ask me all the time, So I love Dostoevsky's vision of the human person in the world. Okay. And people will ask me, who's the better novelist, Dostoevsky or Tolstoy? Every time I tell them, pushkin. No. Okay, I do. I do. That's the real answer. But I tell them all the time, the better novelist is Tolstoy. I don't even think it's close. But Tolstoy has a very different poetic style. He doesn't like philosophical moral clutter. He gets it out of the way in the way in which he's trying to do it. He uses, I mean, an incredible realism. I mean, he brings you into any scene at all. Dostoevsky. It's kind of a fantastical realism, but I love them both. And so you just. You start to learn a grammar for these authors as well. But it is very much to say, well, because ideologically, I like Dostoevsky. He's the better novelist. No, I know that's not true. Tolstoy is much better. And I appreciate much of Tolstoy's moral vision of the world. I'm just not a big fan of how he goes about doing that. I can only make that argument once. I'm willing to dive into, how does he do this, and how is Dostoevsky doing it? That's it. There are different visions. It doesn't really matter that much to me because I think I. I find something valuable in both of them. But if you're asking me the craft of the. Of the novelist, which one do I prefer? I don't know that he's better. I don't. But which one do I prefer? I prefer Dostoevsky.

[Interviewer / Host]

Talking with Dr. Justin Jackson. The book is Elements of Analysis. Out. Soon as we close. Last question. You said you know, the lottery might not be the right text to use for this kind of close analysis. So who might be the authors who will teach you how to do close analysis?

[Dr. Justin Jackson]

Oh, Homer. That's easy. Virgil, I think one of the finest teachers in the ancient world is Ovid. If anyone's listening out there and you're teaching his metamorphoses, please don't teach it as an encyclopedia of myths. Because it's not that he's working through human desire. He wants to know what makes you tick. And by the way, if you're looking for a Moral reading in Ovid. Enjoy. Good luck, because it may just be a via negativa. Just don't do that, don't do that, don't do that. So Ovid is a great teacher. Dante, spectacular. I mean, you already know you're entering into a. You know, there's something more going on in Dante than what we have there. Obviously, a Chaucer. You'll have to learn Middle English, but my goodness, he's a genius in ways in which I wouldn't. I can't say other authors are geniuses. Dostoevsky may be a. What I say, a genius with regards to human pathologies, but I don't know that he's a literary genius. Chaucer is a literary genius. I've been studying for 30 years, and I read something and I'm laughing, and I'm like, that's such a great theological insight. And then when I'm done, I just want to know, how did you do this? It's really something else. So Chaucer, Shakespeare, obviously, I think he's. I think he's really spectacular. Melville, if you want to look for an Americanist. Oh, my goodness. I mean, when you enter into Melville's world, that's a whole new world. And you have to have access to Shakespeare and poetry. You know, I'm not even mentioning poets. I mean, Emily Dickinson's probably my favorite American poet. And once you learn her style and her poetics, it is magnificent. Like a poem can mean three different things simultaneously, and she just sets it there. And so it's really something else. The most important thing here isn't that these are all great authors, because of course they are. The point is that they're great teachers, that when you read it, you know, there's something else going on here. I've been affected here. How did he do this to me? Or Dick is. How does she do this to me? That to me is, you know, when you're choosing texts, sometimes I don't choose what I think are the best texts. Sometimes I choose the text that I know students will learn from this the most. And, you know, and that's, you know, that's helpful. And it's like, it's all set up there for you. Especially Ovid. I mean, I think Ovid, of all of the authors who kind of teach my students how to read, I think Ovid probably does it. Probably the best. And then Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, that poet, because I make them read it in the Middle English, and all of a sudden their mind is blown because they're like, everything connects to everything. I'm like, yes, it does. And then once they can start seeing that, then the frustration is, but you can't say everything. You've got 11 pages to do this. Where are you picking? So that's the particular, that's the logic and the relationship between the particular and the whole. Which passes. Are you going to look at to give us that vision overall, that this is kind of these concentrated moments of those things?

[Interviewer / Host]

Dr. Justin Jackson is chair and professor of English at Hillsdale College. Also, Idrie Seward, candidate chair of English at Hillsdale. And the upcoming book is called elements of analysis. Dr. Jackson, thanks for joining us.

[Dr. Justin Jackson]

Thanks for having me.

[Scott Bertram]

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