E-Book Overview
HarperCollins Publishers. 2014. — 368 pages. Includes bibliographical references and index. — ISBN: 0062301675, 006000942X
A thoroughly revised and updated edition of Thomas C. Foster's classic guide—a lively and entertaining introduction to literature and literary basics, including symbols, themes, and contexts—that shows you how to make your everyday reading experience more rewarding and enjoyable.While many books can be enjoyed for their basic stories, there are often deeper literary meanings interwoven in these texts. How to Read Literature Like a Professor helps us to discover those hidden truths by looking at literature with the eyes—and the literary codes—of the ultimate professional reader: the college professor.What does it mean when a literary hero travels along a dusty road? When he hands a drink to his companion? When he's drenched in a sudden rain shower? Ranging from major themes to literary models, narrative devices, and form, Thomas C. Foster provides us with a broad overview of literature—a world where a road leads to a quest, a shared meal may signify a communion, and rain, whether cleansing or destructive, is never just a shower—and shows us how to make our reading experience more enriching, satisfying, and fun.This revised edition includes new chapters, a new preface, and a new epilogue, and incorporates updated teaching points that Foster has developed over the past decade.
E-Book Content
Dedication For my sons, Robert and Nathan Contents DEDICATION PREFACE INTRODUCTION How’d He Do That? 1. Every Trip Is a Quest (Except When It’s Not) 2. Nice to Eat with You: Acts of Communion 3. Nice to Eat You: Acts of Vampires 4. Now, Where Have I Seen Her Before? 5. When in Doubt, It’s from Shakespeare . . . 6. . . . Or the Bible 7. Hanseldee and Greteldum 8. It’s Greek to Me 9. It’s More Than Just Rain or Snow 10. Never Stand Next to the Hero INTERLUDE Does He Mean That? 11. . . . More Than It’s Gonna Hurt You: Concerning Violence 12. Is That a Symbol? 13. It’s All Political 14. Yes, She’s a Christ Figure, Too 15. Flights of Fancy 16. It’s All About Sex . . . 17. . . . Except Sex 18. If She Comes Up, It’s Baptism 19. Geography Matters . . . 20. . . . So Does Season INTERLUDE One Story 21. Marked for Greatness 22. He’s Blind for a Reason, You Know 23. It’s Never Just Heart Disease . . . And Rarely Just Illness 24. Don’t Read with Your Eyes 25. It’s My Symbol and I’ll Cry If I Want To 26. Is He Serious? And Other Ironies 27. A Test Case POSTLUDE: Who’s in Charge Here? ENVOI APPENDIX: Reading List ACKNOWLEDGMENTS INDEX About the Author Praise for How to Read Literature Like a Professor Also by Thomas C. Foster Copyright About the Publisher Preface THE AMAZING THING ABOUT BOOKS is how they have lives of their own. Writers think they know their business when they sit down to compose a new work, and I suppose they do, right up to the moment when the last piece of punctuation gets planted on the final sentence. More often than not, that punctuation is a period. It should be a question mark, though, because what occurs from then on is anybody’s guess. The classic example is the writer whose best book goes thud upon release. Think Herman Melville or F. Scott Fitzgerald. Melville must have thought, after finding large readershi