How to Read Literature Like a Professor

How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster (Notes)

Introduction: “How’d He Do That?”

 Part of reading is: o Knowing conventions o Recognizing conventions o Anticipating results
 When a person introduces a topic, then digresses onto other topics it doesn’t matter what examples, as soon as you see a couple of them you recognize a pattern. o You know the author is coming back with an application of those examples to the main topic.
 Conventions in stories/novels: o Types of characters o Plot rhythms o Chapter structures o Point-of-view limitations
 Separation of professional reader from a crowd: o Memory o Symbol o Pattern
 “Professors read and think symbolically.” o Everything is a symbol of something until proven otherwise.
 Literature is full of patterns. o Life and books fall into similar patterns.

Foster’s Chapter: “Every Trip Is a Quest (Except When It’s Not)” (Ch. 1; pg.1)

 What does a quest include? o A Knight o A dangerous road o A Holy Grail
At the least: o One dragon o One evil night o One princess
 A quest consists of five things: o A quester o A place to go o A stated reason to go there o Challenges and trials en route o A real reason to go there
“The real reason for a quest never involves the stated reason.” o More often than not, the quester fails at the stated task. o Questers go on the quest because of the stated task, mistakenly thinking that it is their actual mission.
A quest is educational.
“The real reason for a quest is always self-knowledge.” o That is why a quester is generally is always young, inexperienced, immature, and sheltered.

Foster’s Chapter: “Nice to Eat with You: Acts of Communion” (Ch. 2; pg. 7)

 What is communion? o Whenever people eat or drink together.
 Most readers relate communion to Christianity but nearly every religion has ritual involving the coming together of people to share a meal.
 Not all communions are holy or have religious meanings. o Literary versions of communion can be interpreted in various ways.

 Real World o Breaking bread with others is an act of sharing and peace, because you’re breaking bread instead of heads. o Communion is normally taken with those who close are to you.
 Why? o “The act of taking food into our bodies is so personal that we really only want to do it with people we’re very comfortable with.”

Foster’s Chapter: “Now, Where Have I Seen This Before?” (Ch.5; pg. 28)

 There’s only one story. o Stories grow out of other stories. o Poems grow out of other poems.
 Influences from other literary works. o Direct and obvious o Indirect and subtle
 Intertextuality o The ongoing interaction between poems and stories o Deepens and enriches reading experience o Brings multiple layers of meaning to text
Picking up on elements in a literary work such as parallels and analogies will cause your understanding of the novel to deepen, become more complex and meaningful.

Foster’s Chapter: “It’s Greek to Me” (Ch. 9; pg.64)

 Kinds of myth? o Shakespearean o Biblical o Folk/ Fairly tale
 These three kinds of myths work as: o Sources of material o Sources of correspondences o Sources of depth for the modern writer o Enhancers and enrichers to the reading experience
 Biblical myth covers the largest range of human situations o Encompasses all ages of life o All relationships o All phases of the individual’s experience
Myth is a body of story that matters.
 “Greek and Roman myth is so much a part of the fabric of our consciousness, of our unconscious really, that we scarcely notice.”
 Example: Homer used primal patterns known to humans.
 Four great struggles of the human being: o With nature o With the divine o With other humans o With ourselves

Foster’s Chapter: “Is That a Symbol?” (Ch. 12; pg. 97)

 Symbols o People expect symbols to mean one something in particular. o Some have a relatively limited range in meaning. o Many readers expect them to be objects and images rather than events or actions.
 Generally a symbol cannot be reduced to a single meaning o If they can it’s considered allegory
Allegory: Things stand for other thing on a one-for-one basis
 If symbolism was easy and manageable: o “It would result in net loss: the novel would cease to be what it is, a network of meanings and significations that permits a nearly limitless range of possible interpretations.”
 Finding symbol meanings: o Use tools such as:
 Questions
 Experience
 Preexisting knowledge
 Reading is an event of imagination: o Creativity o Inventiveness
 Imagination helps puzzle out what the reader is trying to convey.
 Imagination isn’t fantasy. A reader’s imagination is the act of one creative intelligence engaging another.

Interlude: “Does He Mean That?” (pg.82)

 Discussions of the writer’s intention are not especially profitable.
 Aspiring Writers: o Hungry and aggressive readers o Have absorbed large amounts of literary history and culture
 Keep in mind how long literary composition can take and how much lateral thinking can go in that specific amount of time.
 Lateral Thinking: o “The way writers can keep their eye on the target, whether it be the plot of the play or the ending of the novel or the argument of the poem, and at the same time bring in a great deal of at least tangentially related material.”

Foster’s Chapter: “…So Does Seasons” (Ch. 20; pg. 175)

 Seasons can portray: o Age o Happiness o Dissatisfaction
 Each season has a different representation: o Spring: childhood and youth o Summer: adulthood, romance, fulfillment, passion o Autumn: decline, middle age, tiredness, harvest o Winter: old age, resentment, death
 “Sometimes the season isn’t mentioned specifically or immediately, and could make a matter a bit tricky.”
 Autumn o Harvest is element of autumn. o Harvest could be agricultural. o It could also be a reference to personal harvests.
 Seasons are always the same in literature yet always different.

Interlude: “One Story” (pg. 185)

 There’s only ONE story.
 Originality o “A work actually acquires depth and resonance from the echoes and chimes its sets up with prior texts, weight from the accumulated use of certain basic patterns tendencies.” o Literary works are more comforting when the reader recognizes element from prior reading. o A work that has no reference to previous writing would lack familiarity, losing readers.
 Considerable concepts for originality: o Intertextuality o Archetypes

Foster’s Chapter: “Don’t Read with Your Eyes” (Ch. 25; pg.226)

 Don’t read with your eyes. o Try to find a reading perspective that allows for sympathy with the historical moment of the story. o Find a reading perspective that understands the text as having been written against its own social, historical, cultural, and personal background.
 Try to take works as they are intended to be taken.
 Deconstruction o Pushes skepticism and doubt to its extreme, questioning nearly everything in the story or poem at hand. o The goal is to demonstrate how the work is controlled and reduced by the values and prejudices of its own time.
 “Last-change-for-change” stories o How they work?
 The character is older in age has experienced several chances to grow, reform, and get it right.
 The character is presented with one last chance to educate them in the most needed area.