How to Read Literature Like a Professor Review
How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Thomas C. Foster. New York: Harper Perennial, 2014.
Summary: An introduction to the nuts of agreement literature–symbols, themes, and contexts–that enrich our reading of literary fiction.
Have you ever read a literary work and had the feeling that at that place was so much more going on in the text than y'all were grasping? Or have you read a review of a book that you read, and felt that the reviewer saw much more in the text than you had? Have you felt that you describe the characters and summarize the plot, only wondered what all of information technology might signify (although sometimes a story is but a story, but non frequently in serious literature)? Or were y'all like me in literature courses where this was all brought upwards very seriously and pretentiously in ways that made you lot feel utterly stupid, or worse, where it was but assumed that you understood this stuff?
If you identified with any of these descriptions, I think yous will welcome this book every bit a welcome assistance to enrich your reading. For one thing, Foster engages the states in an informal, offhand way that makes all the unlike literary devices he is discussing interesting and fun, and make you lot feel you lot are not as stupid as you lot thought. Here, for instance is a passage from the chapter "Every Trip is a Quest (Except When It'south Not)":
"The real reason for a quest never involves the stated reason. In fact, mostly, the quester fails at the stated chore. So why do they go and why do nosotros care? They go because of the stated task, mistakenly believing that it is their real mission. We know, nonetheless, that their quest is educational. They don't know enough most the just subject that really matters: themselves.The real reason for a quest is ever self-knowledge. That's why questers are so ofttimes immature, inexperienced, immature, sheltered. Forty-five-year-sometime men either take self-knowledge or they're never going to get it, while your average 16-to-seventeen-year-old kid is probable to have a long fashion to get in the self-cognition department."
Foster, who is the lit prof all of united states wish we had, helps united states to run across that retention, symbol, and pattern are key to going beyond characters and plot. As we are reading, asking "where accept I seen that before?" can be helpful to agreement what is going on. Shakespeare, the Bible, and Greek mythology are iii common sources upon which writers consciously or subconsciously depict. Ane of the primal things is that "there's only one story" and that writers depict upon what they've read, a phenomenon known equally "intertextuality." Have you ever felt your books are talking with each other? They just may be.
Then there are symbols, and the claiming of interpreting them: pelting and weather condition, trips that are quests, shared meals that in some way signify communion, going into and coming out of water (baptism), all the symbols that point to sex, and the other things that sex points to.
Then there are patterns, like the vampire design–the older person who sucks the life out of the younger, innocent, the hero blueprint and how it is usually those next to the hero who die (like the crew in the red uniforms on Star Trek) or the pattern of the Christ figure. Then of course, there is irony which turns the patterns on their heads.
Foster walks u.s. through all of these, with a multifariousness of examples from literary works. I constitute his use of these works to illustrate diverse elements from symbol to irony piqued my marvel to read works I have non read. After covering these elements, he invites us to put them into practise with an exquisite curt story by Katherine Mansfield, "The Garden Party."
The book concludes with the encouragement to read what we like while offering a reading list of works he has mentioned throughout the piece of work as places to start. What I nearly appreciated was his encouragement in the previous chapter in his discussion on Roland Barthes "decease of the author." His point is that what we really have admission to is the text and our opinion of it. He urges:
"Don't sacrifice control of your opinions to critics, teachers, famous writers, or know-information technology-all professors. Heed to them, merely read confidently and assertively, and don't be aback or atoning about your reading. You and I both know you're capable and intelligent, and so don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Trust the text and trust your instincts. You lot'll rarely go far wrong."
Now doesn't that brand y'all want to read not bad literature?
Source: https://bobonbooks.com/2019/01/25/review-how-to-read-literature-like-a-professor/
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