HOW TO READ LITERATURE LIKE A PROFESSOR

A summary of Thomas C. Foster’s Book

Mrs. Smith-English

“To be, or not to be…that is the question!”

Introduction- How’d She Do That??

• “A Raisin in the Sun” Mr. Linder is the devil!!
• WHAT??
• Bargains with evil, selling your “soul” (Walter)
• Common to literature- Faust, Damn Yankees, What else??

Introduction- How’d She Do That??

• Professor- “What, you don’t get it??
• Student- “We don’t get it and we think that you’re making it up.”

​

​

• COMMUNICATION PROBLEM- Both are reading the same story, but are not using the same analytical apparatus.

Grammar of Literature

• Most Students= focus on the story and characters
• Professor= What is the effect? Whom does the character resemble? Where have I seen this situation before? Didn’t ____ say that?

MEMORY. SYMBOL. PATTERN

• Memory- Use your mental Rolodex every time that you read.
• Symbol- Everything is a symbol until proven otherwise.
• Pattern- Look for what is repeated-there is a reason.

Why are we learning this??

• You need to see Linder as the devil without me!!

Every Trip is a Quest

• Quest
• A “quester”
• A place to go
• Stated reason to go
• Challenges and trials en route
• Real reason to go (discovered along the way)- It will always be some from of self-knowledge!!

Every Trip is a Quest

• Really??
• YES!!!- The stated reason almost always fades away.
• Huck Finn
• Lord of the Rings
• Star Wars
• Other examples??

Except When its Not…

• Every once in awhile…
• A ride to work is just a way for a character to get from point A to point B, but pay attention because there could be something else going on!
• ​
• Once you figure out quests, the rest is easy!!

Nice to Eat With You

• Sigmund Freud
• Known to always be smoking a cigar.
• Symbolism??
• “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

Nice to Eat with You

• Sometimes a meal is just a meal…most of the time it’s not!
• “Whenever people eat or drink together it is communion.”
• WHAT??
• ​
• BREAKING BREAD=PEACE

Acts of Communion

• Eating is personal, so we carefully select who we eat with…
• Why??
• ​
• Meals put us all on equal footing people who are different can bond over a meal.
• “Cathedral”
• Tom Jones

Acts of Communion

• What about if they don’t? What is a meal turns ugly or doesn’t happen at all?
• Different outcome-same logic
• Good Meal= equal footing and good outcome
• Bad Meal= shows differences and bad outcome

Acts of Communion

• How can a meal go “bad”?
• During a meal it is difficult for a character to distance themselves. What they do or don’t do can reveal something important!!
• ​
• They are difficult to write, so when an author includes it, there is a reason.

Nice to Eat You: Acts of Vampires

• Actual Vampires?
• Actual vampires are only the beginning; not only that, they’re not even necessarily the most alarming type.

Nice to Eat You: Acts of Vampires

• Dracula- the classic vampire
• Attractive
• Alluring
• Dangerous
• Mysterious
• Even Brad Pitt has
• Portrayed a vampire!!

Nice to Eat You: Acts of Vampires

• Vampire Story Outline
• Old Man- attractive, but evil violates a young woman
• Leaves his mark
• Steals innocence
• Leaves them followers in his “sin”
• ​
• There must be more going on!!
• ​

Nice to Eat You: Acts of Vampires

• Ghosts/ Vampires have a purpose.
• Doppelgangers can serve as a useful foil.

​

All 3 can tackle taboo subjects without explicitly stating them. (Example-Victorian Society)

Nice to Eat You: Acts of Vampires

• Ghosts and vampires are never just about ghosts and vampires!!
• Look at the structure again…
• Older figure with worn out values
• Young female
• Stripping away of youth
• Continuance of life force
• Death/destruction of young woman

Nice to Eat You: Acts of Vampires

• Literal vs. Figurative meaning= all about EXPLOTATION
• “As long as people act selfishly toward their fellows in exploitive and selfish ways, the vampire will be with us.”

Now, Where Have I Seen Her Before?

• If you read enough and give what you read enough thought, you will see:
• Patterns
• Archetypes
• Recurrences
• ​
• There is no such thing as a wholly original work of literature!!

Now, Where Have I Seen Her Before?

• Where have I seen him or her before?
• Literature?
• History?
• ​
• There is only one story and other stories grow out of it!

Now, Where Have I Seen Her Before?

• What does this mean for our reading?
• Recognize patterns
• Draw comparisons or parallels
• ​
• There is a never ending dialogue between old and new texts!!

Now, Where Have I Seen Her Before?

• But we haven’t read EVERYTHING!!
• You have read some and if you keep looking and keep reading, you will see more and more connections!

When in Doubt, It’s From Shakespeare

• What do…
• “10 Things I Hate About You”
• “O”
• “West Side Story”
• ​
• Have in common…?
• SHAKESPEARE!!

When in Doubt, It’s from Shakespeare

• Every new age and writer invents their own Shakespeare.
• The characters serve as archetypes (Hamlet, Romeo, Macbeth, Ophelia, etc.)
• The plots and situations are reinvented (killing of unfaithful wife, woman drowns, spiteful daughters, etc.)

When in Doubt, It’s from Shakespeare

• Where have I heard that before?
• “To thine own self be true”
• “All the world’s a stage”
• “What’s in a name”
• “Double, double, toil
• and trouble”
• “To be, or not to be”

There are 47 pages of Shakespeare in Bartlett’s Quotations!!

When in Doubt, It’s from Shakespeare

• All right…so the Bard is always with us. What does that mean??

​

​

He means something to us as readers in part because he means so much to our writers!!

When in Doubt, It’s from Shakespeare

• Why?
• Makes an author sound smarter.
• Indicates that they have read Him.
• Gives authority to what they are saying.
• ​
• Remember: New texts are bouncing off ideas out of old ones. There is a dialogue between the new and the old.

When in Doubt, It’s from Shakespeare

• A writer may be…
• Reworking a message
• Exploiting changes in attitude from one era to another
• Recalling parts of an earlier work to highlight parts of the new
• Drawing on associations the reader holds in order to fashion something new and “original”
• ​

When in Doubt, It’s from Shakespeare

• Why Shakespeare??
• His stories are great, characters compelling, and language fabulous.
• When we recognize the interplay, we become partners with the dramatist in creating meaning.
• ​
• So…if it sounds too good to be true…it’s SHAKESPEARE!

Or the Bible…

Or the Bible…

• Many stories take on a biblical theme and re-work it.
• “East of Eden”- fallen world
• “Pulp Fiction”- apocalyptic
• ​
• Loss of Innocence= The Fall

Or the Bible…

• Literature can also show the history of Christianity.
• Beowulf
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
• Canterbury Tales

Or the Bible…

• Some works use religious imagery to illustrate disparity or disruption…
• “Christ-figures”
• Biblical Names
• ​
• “Okay, so there are a lot of ways The Bible shows up. But isn’t that a problem for anyone who isn’t exactly…”

Or the Bible…

• Learn the allusions!!
• The Fall
• Cain and Abel
• The Ark
• Golgotha
• Etc.

Hanseldee and Greteldum

• “So…I get that literature grows out of something else, but what about what is going on right now?”
• Who are you gonna call?
• GHOSTBUSTERS- Are people really going to remember this long term??

Hanseldee and Greteldum

• Current is only going to work right now…it takes time to prove staying power.
• Literary Canon works that have proven themselves.
• VARIES WITH COUNTRY AND TIME

Hanseldee and Greteldum

• What can a writer assume everyone will recognize?
• Kiddie Lit
• Alice in Wonderland
• Treasure Island
• Narnia
• Cat in the Hat
• Goodnight Moon
• Snow White
• Sleeping Beauty

Hanseldee and Greteldum

• Hansel and Gretel
• This story can be reworked in many ways…
• Young Lovers Lost
• Car Breaks Down
• Wrong Turn
• No Phone
• Stumble Upon a Crack House

Hanseldee and Greteldum

• “Lostness” is a common motif in literature today
• An author doesn’t have to use the entire story, but may use
• Details
• Patterns
• Portions (selected scenes)

Hanseldee and Greteldum

• Fairy Tales with a simplistic worldview can tell about a complicated and morally ambiguous world through IRONY!
• Lost Children= EXISTENTIALISM
• We want the new and the old when we read!

It’s Greek to Me

• To most people MYTH= UNTRUE…but that is NOT true!
• Myth is…
• A body of a story that matters (all communities have one)
• 19c. Wagner-Germanic myths for operas
• Native American- Tribal Myths
• Toni Morrison- African Myths

It’s Greek to Me

• Most myths refer to Greece and Rome
• What can a myth do?
• Relate overt subject matter
• Parallel persons and situations
• ironize- turn the subject matter on its head for the purpose of irony
• ​

It’s Greek to Me

• The recognition makes our experience deeper!

It’s More than just Rain or Snow

• “It was a dark and stormy night…”

​

• It’s never JUST rain!!

​

• Water Changes Noah Rainbow

It’s More than Just Rain or Snow

• Rain
• Forces people together
• Atmospherics (mystery, etc.)
• Misery
• Democratic (it falls on the just and unjust)
• Symbolically cleanse a character
• Restorative
• Principal element of spring

It’s More than just Rain or Snow

• In addition…
• River
• Poluted
• Rainbows
• formed by rain and sun
• symbol of a promise
• Fog
• confusion
• Snow
• Clean
• Stark
• Severe

It’s More than just rain or Snow

• Always Check the Weather!!

More than It’s Gonna Hurt You: Concerning Violence

• Beloved
• Murdered Child (to save from a life of slavery)
• Ghostly return
• Represent 60 + million Africans who were killed

More than It’s Gonna Hurt You: Concerning Violence

More than It’s Gonna Hurt You: Concerning Violence

• Violence just…IS!
• Usually however it is a metaphor
• Macbeth- “Out, out brief candle”
• Violence reveals an uncaring relationship with the universe

More than It’s Gonna Hurt You: Concerning Violence

• Anna Karenina
• throws self under train
• Emma Bovery
• poison
• Wile E. Coyote
• “Yikes”- and then proceeds to harm the Road Runner

More than It’s Gonna Hurt You: Concerning Violence

More than It’s Gonna Hurt You: Concerning Violence

• Is it fair to compare them?
• Do death by consumption or heart disease really fall into the same universe as a stabbing?
• SURE- different, but the same!!
• ​
• We feel greater weight when there is something happening beyond the surface!!

More than It’s Gonna Hurt You: Concerning Violence

• Killing a daughter
• Hard to forgive…symbolic importance
• ​
• Author generated…what does misfortune really tell us?