How to Read Literature like a Professor



How to Read Literature like a Professor

Student Resource

Disclaimer: the ideas (and header names) in this document are credited entirely to Thomas C. Foster, who, in 2003, wrote a terrific book of the same name, New York in Toronto by HarperCollins. Foster’s text is much more in-depth, and highly recommended to those considering pursuing or enjoying literature in the future, but not very economical to distribute to all students. This document serves to give you a taste of his work, and the benefit of taking his advice in how to read between the lines.

|Every Trip is a Quest (Except When It’s Not) |…Or the Bible |

|If you have the following elements, you’ve probably got yourself a quest: a quester, a place to go, a stated |As above, but even more so. For hundreds of years, the Christian bible was required reading. Its stories, then,|

|reason, trials and tribulations, a real reason (always self-knowledge). If the trip runs throughout the text, |contain the archetypes found in many, many, dare we say all, Western literature. Do you have to read the bible?|

|the quest is probably the trope that you’ve got. If it’s incidental, maybe not. |No. Maybe just familiarize yourself with some of the more famous stuff: Genesis, Exodus, Jesus. |

|Nice to Eat You: Acts of Vampires |Now, Where Have I Seen Her Before? |

|Vampires seduce, manipulate, and exploit. Even if the character doesn’t have pointy teeth, if he/she extracts |As Northrop Frye proposed, every text is part of a larger narrative, and every plot, character, symbol, etc. in|

|the lifeblood of the vulnerable, that character is a vampire. The reverse is not always true. |some way connects archetypally to other texts. The more you read, the better a reader you will be. Consider: |

| |mushroom hunting. |

|When in Doubt, It’s from Shakespeare… |Nice to Eat with You: Acts of Communion |

|Shakespeare’s texts confer authority, because they are elegantly written and have, over time, come to |Eating together means coming to common ground. Whenever characters eat together, they’re communing. Not every |

|constitute sacred literature. If you want to sound smart, and play on the shared culture of Shakespeare, use |act of communion has to be holy, or even pretty, and some don’t even involve food, but they all serve that |

|his ideas somewhere in your work. |function: bonding. |

|Hanseldee and Greteldum |It’s Greek to Me |

|Really great stories are those that achieve the perfect blend of strangeness and familiarity: they have to be |Even Shakespeare and the bible are connected to older archetypes. Those original forms exist in the early myths|

|familiar enough for us to read them with any hope of getting them, and strange enough that we get a sense of |of Greek and Roman culture. As with the bible, you don’t have to read all of them; however, if you know the |

|originality as we read. For these reasons, stories that are like fairy tales really work. |major gods and goddesses, and their basic stories, you’re pretty safe. See especially works by Homer, Ovid, |

| |Sophocles, and Virgil. |

|It’s More Than Just Rain or Snow |…More Than It’s Gonna Hurt You: Concerning Violence |

|Precipitation is highly symbolic. You have to ask yourself in each case what the precipitation is doing, and |Violence is everywhere in literature, but it takes two forms: specific injuries to specific characters (usually|

|what associations can be made from there. Consider, too, that rain and snow cover everything, can be terribly |symbolic), and the violence that befalls them to serve the purposes of plot. In either case, the purpose of the|

|destructive, yet can mix with sun to create rainbows. |violence must be determined. This much is especially in the case of texts renowned for their violent content. |

|It’s All Political |Yes, She’s a Christ Figure, Too |

|Every text in some way reflects its origins: when and where was it written? under what conditions? by whom? In |You might be a Christ figure if: you’ve been wounded; you’re self-sacrificing; you’re good with kids, fish, |

|these ways, every text provides an opportunity for social or political criticism. Just ask yourself while you |loaves, and water; you’re 33 years old; you’re a carpenter; you walk everywhere (sometimes on water); you often|

|read how the text’s lessons could be applied to wider society. Even though it is said that some art exists for |are portrayed with your arms outstretched; you’ve spent time alone in the wilderness, where you may have been |

|its own sake, that idea, too, is political. |tempted by the devil; you speak in parables; you’ve been buried, but arose on the third day; you’re very |

| |forgiving; you’re here to redeem humanity. |

|Flights of Fancy |If She Comes Up, It’s Baptism |

|Flying, symbolically speaking, is being free. Lots of characters fly, are flung, or levitate in some way. How |When characters get into the water, you have to assume there’s something biblical afoot. Characters may engage |

|the character ends up airborne is important: was it intentional? the result of some other action? mysterious |in all kinds of activity in water, and get into the water for a variety of purposes, but because baptism is |

|and divine? In these ways, flights can be transcendent, too. |such a significant image in western literature, you can’t possibly believe that a character just having “a |

| |bath”. Sometimes, hanging out in the water doesn’t go so well for the character: he/she drowns. So it goes. |

| |That ain’t baptism. |

|Geography Matters… |Marked for Greatness |

|Quests and landforms, of course, matter, but so do the directions of characters’ travels. The north is |The notion of the underdog is one dear to our hearts, and the worse off the dog is at the beginning of the |

|associated with repressiveness, while the south is a land of permissiveness. When characters go south, expect a|story, the better the feeling we get when it wins. Characters who are marginalized by the societies in which |

|party (or, at least, for the throwing off of old conventions and expectations). |they live are the best underdogs. These characters can take many forms, but all of them share in common a |

| |physical abnormality – a hunchback, scars, limps, etc. – which let us know that they’re destined for something |

| |great. |

|It’s Never Just Heart Disease… |…And Rarely Just Illness |

|Think about what we associate with hearts. If your character has heart trouble, he actually has much, much |Illnesses in literature meet three criteria: they are picturesque, they have mysterious origins, and they are |

|bigger problems. |symbolic. See above on violence, physical markings, and heart disease. |

|Don’t Read with Your Eyes |It’s All About Sex… |

|Read with eyes from the historical moment in which the text was written. Even if an author strives to avoid |Look for sneaky ways that authors stick sex in their works (because writing about sex is actually really |

|including his/her own historical context, it will sneak into the text in subtle ways. Be aware that your own |difficult and often quite clunky). Look for images that could recall sex, in terms of movements, sounds, |

|context is enormously different from that of the author. So, bridge the gap. |landforms, actions. …Except Sex |

| |If there’s actual sex in the text (and it isn’t pornography), it’s there to symbolize bigger things: |

| |liberation, exploitation, subversion, etc. |

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