Summary: We study literature to understand the people who created it.
Commentary:
Ok, pretty good so far. That is kind of the point of this whole exercise.through literary monuments, we can retrace the way in which men felt and thought many centuries ago. This method has been tried and found successful.
You say to yourself that the work before you is not of its own creation. It is simply a mold like a fossil shell, an imprint similar to one of those forms embedded in a stone by an animal which once lived and perished. Beneath the shell was an animal and behind the document there was a man.
And that's a pretty cool way to look at art in general. It's an impression of the artist.
In the same way do you study the document in order to comprehend the man; both shell and document are dead fragments and of value only as indications of the complete living being. [...] It is a mistake to study the document as if it existed alone by itself. That is treating things merely as a pedant, and you subject yourself to the illusions of a book-worm.
This part, less good
I had a middle school social studies teacher who said something like this about stereotypes: When someone says a group of people is always something, they're always wrong.
I think a broadened version of this is actually good philosophy. If someone tells you something is always, never, or only X, they're probably wrong. After introducing the thesis in early, the intro explains all the reasons why literature can be useful to find out about a person, time period, culture, etc., but fails to prove that's the only (or even best) reason to read literature. People obviously read, watch, etc. for other reasons, and seem to enjoy it, better themselves by it, etc. In the absence of harm (and, in fact, presence of benefit) of reading for entertainment, other information, etc. (so many etcs tonight) a compelling argument would be needed for why we should only read for a specific reason, and Taine doesn't advance one.
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