I hate people who overestimate the importance of that. Context doesn't make art great, not at least primarily so. I read Iliad without a single footnote or much explanation beforehand beyond a short intro that I practically ran through and I can say I greatly enjoyed even if I missed some geographical reference or whatever.

>>7993879
Hate to play the "doubles' advocate", but references and context aren't about bragging rights (oh look how literary I am, making a reference to the Bible or whatever), but rather about completion. Some concepts, situations or characters might seem trivial without the bigger cultural picture. So it might seem like you "got the idea", but are in fact missing a subtle yet essential dimension. This of course isn't always solved by reference or reiteration so sometimes the point is missed just because the reader isn't familiar enough with an epoch or culture (stuff that history books don't always fix).

tl;dr references aren't everything, but don't be a sperg about it

why shouldn't i worry about this? I'm not fully understanding the text if I don't recognize a reference

>>7993879
Looks like partialasian

>>7995040
there's no such thing as "full understanding" of a text.

>>7995371

Probably not, but you can't be careless.

>>7995371
but there is at the very least a more complete and a less complete understanding