Preview

How to Read Literature Like a Professor Chapter Analysis

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1763 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
How to Read Literature Like a Professor Chapter Analysis
How To Read Literature Like a Professor

Chapter 1: Every Trip Is a Quest (Except When It’s Not)

In Chapter 1 the author explains the symbolic reasoning of why a character takes a trip. They don't just take a trip they take a quest. Structurally a quest has a quester, a place to go, a stated reason to go there, challenges and trials en route, and a reason to go there. Quests usually involve characters such as a knight, a dangerous road, a Holy Grail, a dragon, an evil knight, and a princess. The quest also involves the character to gain self-knowledge out of taking the adventure to the stated place where he or she is going.

Chapter 2: Nice to Eat with You: Acts of Communion

Chapter 2 tells of the symbolism that takes place while characters are eating a meal together. The author states that when people eat together it is saying "I'm with you, I like you, we form a community together." The meal also shows how a person feels towards another person. It can show whether you like or dislike the person. The author explains how the description of the food isn't just to inform you of what is being eaten. It is to draw you into the moment and help you feel the realism of that moment.

Chapter 3: Nice to Eat You: Acts of Vampires

In Chapter 3 the author explains in Chapter three how vampirism isn't always about vampires. Vampirism is a characteristic a character can portray, such as selfishness, exploitation, and rudeness. The character takes advantage of people, like a vampire would to his prey. Many authors actually use vampires, ghosts, or doppelgangers to portray vampiristic qualities instead of letting the reader infer those qualities into a human.

Chapter 4: If It’s Square, It’s A Sonnet

Chapter 4 tells about how sonnets are formed and how to identify a sonnet. Sonnets are in a square shape and they always have 14 lines in them. The author says that sonnets may be challenging to understand, but they are the most interesting poems because they are

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    This chapter from How to Read Literature Like a Professor starts off as if Thomas Foster, the author, is having a conversation with the reader like they are in the same room. When one looks at the title, he preconceives a notion that it will be a formal, more academic book when what he truly finds is a casual writing style that makes the reader feel more at ease. Foster begins to introduce a conditional situation about a fictional character named Kip who is described as run of the mill; The story continues to unfold as Kip goes on an errand for his mother which is almost a “quest,” as Foster puts it. This quest is then compared to the Hero’s Journey, which was interesting in and of itself, because Foster created this hypothetical, seemingly-normal…

    • 258 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In Thomas C. Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Chapter 12 is dedicated to symbols, and how they are not concrete. Symbolism is all about interpretation, which makes them difficult to understand. Foster says the most difficult thing about symbolism is that everyone wants to have one concrete answer. He argues that symbolism has multiple gray areas, and a majority of people confuses symbolism with allegories. Allegories are things that stand for one certain thing.…

    • 244 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the first chapter of Thomas C. Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Foster discusses the five aspects of a typical character’s quest and alerts all readers that “when a character hits the road, we should start to pay attention” (6). To start out the chapter a rather dull scene is set of a young boy commuting to a store to retrieve bread for his mother. Foster reveals that the seemingly unimportant commute is actually a quest. It is determined that “a quester” (3), a destination, an obvious reason for the travel, trials and tribulations and a real reason are all necessities to a character’s quest. While differentiating the obvious reason and the real reason can be challenging, Foster explains that the obvious reason to a quest…

    • 409 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In Charles Dickson’s novel, The Christmas Carol, when the Scrooge wake –up from his “dream” he went out and bought a swan for his poor assistants’ family for Christmas. By doing this it was kind of a peace offering, it showed that Scrooge turns a new leaf, and by doing so he was now accepted back into the community.…

    • 2895 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The fourth chapter of How to Read Literature is “Interpretation,” which happened to be the longest chapter of this book. Eagleton gave the reader a very well-known example of the poem, "Baa, baa, black sheep.” He presented his argument, in this case, his literary theory in a quite interesting way. Eagleton pointed out that you can’t write with any interpretation. His argument for the chapter was that the work you write much be true, depending on the context. It is understood that interpretations will happen now and then, but you must not allow the narrative to be so ignorant and biased to one meaning. Like the rest of the chapters in the book, Eagleton used a book to give an example. The chapter allowed the reader to realize that works being…

    • 150 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Politics impact all aspects of modern life, both in real life and literary works. In the book How to Read Literature like a Professor, George Foster, the author, discusses how almost every novel has political undertones and that it is the author’s duty to not make their views obvious, but subtly place them in their writing as this will give off the greatest effect. The politically fueled novels 1984, by George Orwell, and The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, both had instances where the authors were trying to convey their views, but did so in a way that paralleled the real world as to not make it completely obvious and off putting. These real world happenings were the fuel for the authors in writing their novels. Whether it was WWII…

    • 195 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Does everything in “How to Read Literature Like a Professor” match “The Hobbit”? Breaking down “The Hobbit” will help to further conclude what concepts it does and does not follow in Thomas C. Foster's book “How to Read Literature Like a Professor”…

    • 613 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Quest consists of a knight, a dangerous road, a Holy Grail, a dragon, one evil knight, and one princess…

    • 1615 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Chapter Analyses

    • 2513 Words
    • 11 Pages

    Many events opened up the book in chapter 1 of The Great Gatsby, indicating that this book would appeal to many in a sense that it could be easily connected to. A significant quote from chapter 1 is a thought from Nick explaining his family heritage. Nick says “The Carraways are something of a clan, and we have a tradition that we're descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather's brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War, and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on to-day.” Most would see this as him describing his family heritage, but when read more in depth you realize that he is trying to illustrate that his family achieved the American Dream through persistence and hard work. He mentions “the Dukes of Buccleuch” to create his point that they sound like they come from a family who inherits the American Dream, but notifies the reader that his family achieved the American Dream by working towards it. As you read on you learn that Jay Gatsby inherited his wealth, giving Nick a bad perception of him due to the fact that Nick’s family has worked to achieve their wealth, yet to Gatsby the American Dream is just the pursuit of self pleasure. All in all, the quote relates well to the characters, but also to the theme that no matter how wealthy you are, you cannot buy yourself the happiness you can obtain through hard work towards the true American Dream.…

    • 2513 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Chapter Three: The symbol of vampirism is a very selfish one. The traits of vampirism include; selfishness, exploitation, refusal to respect the autonomy of other people, using people to get what we want, placing our desires, particularly ugly ones, above the needs of another. An example of vampirism in 1984 by George Orwell is the character Julia. She is selfish in the fact that she is very independent and concerned for herself. “He fear of the unknown and continued torture in The Ministry of Love building caused her to crack under pressure. She explains to Winston, after the ordeal, that she didn’t give a damn what he suffered because all she cared about was herself.” (Orwell 292) She is…

    • 1338 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In How to Read Literature like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster, Foster uses literature to simplify his analysis of modernist novels. One piece of literature, he analyzes is the short story The Dead by James Joyce. In the short story, snow is a prominent element and symbolizes death and unity. It is used to highlight the death of Gabriel’s delicate ego. With impeccable wording, Joyce uses the snow to enlighten Gabriel about an important lesson--that he is an inadequate piece of the world and that he is only one of the thousands of people of the world united by snow. Joyce describes Gabriel's newfound humility as, “[h]is own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and…

    • 180 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    How to Read Literature Like a Professor (Thomas C. Foster) Notes Introduction Archetypes: Faustian deal with the devil (i.e. trade soul for something he/she wants) Spring (i.e. youth, promise, rebirth, renewal, fertility) Comedic traits: tragic downfall is threatened but avoided hero wrestles with his/her own demons and comes out victorious What do I look for in literature? - A set of patterns - Interpretive options (readers draw their own conclusions but must be able to support it) - Details ALL feed the major theme - What causes specific events in the story? - Resemblance to earlier works - Characters’ resemblance to other works - Symbol - Pattern(s) Works: A Raisin in the Sun, Dr. Faustus, “The Devil and Daniel Webster”, Damn Yankees, Beowulf Chapter 1: The Quest The Quest: key details 1. a quester (i.e. the person on the quest) 2. a destination 3. a stated purpose 4. challenges that must be faced during on the path to the destination 5. a reason for the quester to go to the destination (cannot be wholly metaphorical) The motivation for the quest is implicit- the stated reason for going on the journey is never the real reason for going The real reason for ANY quest: self-knowledge Works: The Crying of Lot 49 Chapter 2: Acts of Communion Major rule: whenever characters eat or drink together, it’s communion!…

    • 6675 Words
    • 27 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Art History 1

    • 964 Words
    • 4 Pages

    viewer the idea that he or she could potentially embark on such a journey themselves. The uncertainty of destination gives the travelers a heroic appeal. The vantage point gives the viewer a sense of a…

    • 964 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Chapters five of ' how to read literature like a professor' tells us that ; nothing is original, that everything is taken from something that has previously been told of a or wrote about. The road by Cormac McCarthy abides by this. When i was in the eight grade I read The Picture of Dorian Grey, When i was in the ninth grade i read The Twilight Saga, and last week i read Fifty Shades of Grey. All three of the listed books are derived from one another , in all three books reader is presented with an irresistibly sexy, mysterious man. All three books also contain some naive, sheltered girl who falls hopelessly in love with the man. The man in all of the books is corrupt in some way, rather it be a power hungry prince, a vampire or a "dominant".…

    • 299 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    According to Bauer and Traina book survey helps the reader to get a sense of what the writer’s purpose was for the book. Bauer and Traina (2011) state, “when one surveys the whole book, one begins with the literary product as the writer that we encounter in the text, the implied author, conceived it. We begin where the writer did. We begin by getting a sense of what the writer set out to do” (2011, p.79). Another important point made was, “They did not write bits and pieces (sentences and paragraphs here and there) and haphazardly slap them together” (Bauer & Traina, 2011, p.79). I liken reading a book, from the beginning, instead of reading a single passage, to that of seeing a movie from the middle…

    • 336 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays