Most college textbooks include a fair amount of editorial apparatus to aid in the prereading process. In this textbook the apparatus consists of chapter introductions, headnotes for individual readings, footnotes, endnotes, and study questions. Essay assignments also provide valuable clues to the themes and topics that are important. You might even first read the questions at the end of a reading; they will tell you some of the things to look for when you read the text.
Skimming a text is another good way to get a sense of what you are likely to find in it. A quick reading, in which you look at the beginning, some of the middle passages, and the end, can tell you a lot about the shape of the argument. People whose major reading experience is passive often find it unsettling to read the end of a work before reading the beginning. "Spoiling the ending" is the wrong way to read a mystery novel, to be sure, but it can be a very good way to read a complicated text. You might, for example, find a complicated text's major points summarized in neat little packages at the ends of essays or chapters. If you are struggling with what an author is saying, the end is just as good a place to start understanding it as the beginning. No rule says that you have to go in order.
The key to prereading is to use all of the resources available to you to understand a text before you start reading it. Your mind can focus on only so much while you read. Most likely, you try to construct a "big picture" while you read something. In the process, you often skip over important details because you lack a conceptual framework into which you can place these details. If you build the big picture before you start, you begin reading the text with a conceptual framework already in place. Then, when you encounter a new detail or a new bit of evidence in your reading, your mind will know what to do with it.
Questions for Prereading
Here are some of the key questions that you should ask as you gather information in the prereading stage of the reading process:
Who is the author of the work?
The more information you have about an author, the better you will be able to anticipate the kinds of points that he or she will make. In reading a work like Aung San Suu Kyi's "In Quest of Democracy," for example, you can infer certain things about the argument before reading the text, once you know that the author is (1) the daughter of a famous Burmese political leader, (2) a Western- trained academic, (3) a devoted admirer of Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., (4) the winner of a democratic national election that was invalidated by a military dictatorship, and (5) an outspoken advocate of democracy who was kept under house arrest in her own country. Knowing these key biographical facts—which are readily available in the selection introduction, on the back of any of her books, and on dozens of Web pages—allows you to begin reading "In Quest of Democracy" with a better understanding of Aung San Suu Kyi's general argument, allowing you to focus on her specific claims and her support for those claims.
What was the work's original purpose?
None of the texts in this anthology were written for college students in need of things to write essays about. They all come from historical and rhetorical contexts that shaped both their meanings and their methods of presentation. Even very good readers can misread a text when they ignore the characteristics of the original intended audience. Take, for example, Mo Tzu's "Against Music." To modern readers, this essay might seem like a strict, old-fashioned argument against music. When it was written, however, music was a symbol of luxury, available only to the very wealthy, who enjoyed it at the expense of everybody else. In its original context, "Against Music" was therefore a radical attack on privilege and power.
What cultural factors might have influenced the author?
The further removed you are from an author's culture, time, and place, the more difficult it can be to understand that author's work—even when the work's terminology does not seem especially difficult. To make better sense of texts from different cultures, it can be helpful to learn more about the conventions and concerns of these cultures. The basic argument of Mo Tzu's "Against Music"—that society should not support or allow the production of music—will make very little sense to contemporary readers who do not know that in ancient China music was an extremely expensive luxury available only to the most wealthy members of the aristocracy. Those who attempt to apply Mo Tzu's arguments to modern notions of music will miss the point entirely.
What larger conversation is this text part of?
A written text is part of a larger conversation, and reading a single text is often like listening to only one part of that conversation: you miss most of the questions that have been asked and points that are being responded to. Occasionally, this anthology will give you different texts from the same general historical conversation, such as the debate between Mencius and Hsun Tzu on Confucian notions of human nature, or the opinions of Paley and Darwin on the origins of life on earth.
More often, though, you will need to familiarize yourself with the terms of the discussion that surround a text you are preparing to read. In anthologies, this kind of information might appear in the chapter introductions or in the headnotes or footnotes that accompany texts. You might also locate it with a quick search online. The effort required to learn as much as you can about a text before you start reading it will almost always pay off in increased understanding and retention, and might even save you some time.
Prereading Practice
Read the following passage from John Henry Newman's "Knowledge Its Own End." On your initial reading, do not do any prereading—just read it straight through and then summarize its key points.
I am asked what is the end of University Education, and of the Liberal or Philosophical Knowledge which I conceive it to impart: I answer, that what I have already said has been sufficient to show that it has a very tangible, real, and sufficient end, though the end cannot be divided from that knowledge itself. Knowledge is capable of being its own end. Such is the constitution of the human mind, that any kind of knowledge, if it be really such, is its own reward. And if this is true of all knowledge, it is true also of that special Philosophy, which I have made to consist in a comprehensive view of truth in all its branches, of the relations of science to science, of their mutual bearings, and their respective values. What the worth of such an acquirement is, compared with other objects which we seek,—wealth or power or honour or the conveniences and comforts of life, I do not profess here to discuss; but I would maintain, and mean to show, that it is an object, in its own nature so really and undeniably good, as to be the compensation of a great deal of thought in the compassing, and a great deal of trouble in the attaining.
Once you have read this passage without any prereading and summarized it, turn to the headnote for this reading (p. 31) and use the information in it to answer the following questions:
Who was John Henry Newman, and when did he write?
What was the original context of "Knowledge Its Own End"? What was Newman's position when he gave the lecture that would eventually become this essay?