Shrunken Outline of Thomas C. Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor
1. Every Trip is a Quest (except when it’s not) (“The Hero’s Journey”; Bildungsroman)
quester (hero)place to gostated reason to go therechallenges/trialsreal reason to go = self-knowledge
2. Nice to Eat With You: Acts of Communion (breaking bread; guest-host relationship; xenia)
characters eat/drink together = communionnot usually religiousact of sharing and peacefailed meal carries negative connotations
3. Nice to Eat You: Acts of Vampires (cannibalism, making immortal; unnatural union; succubae, incubi, taboo)
a. Literal Vampirism: nasty old man, attractive but evil, violates young woman, leaves his mark, takes her innocence
b. Sexual implications—a trait of 19th century literature to address sex indirectly
c. Symbolic Vampirism: selfishness, exploitation, refusal to respect the autonomy of other people
4. If It’s Square, It’s a Sonnet (generally, a one stanza poem of 14 lines of iambic pentameter [10 syllables/line])
Italian: octave/8 lines + sestet/six lines (ABBAABBA CDECDE)English: three quatrains/4 lines + a couplet/2 lines ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
5. Now, Where Have I Seen Her Before? (INTERTEXTUALITY)
a. No such thing as wholly original work of literature; stories grow out of other stories, poems out of other poems
b. Only one story: humanity and human nature, endlessly repeated – Holzer debates this - DANGEROUS
c. “Intertexuality”: recognizing connections among stories deepens our appreciation and experience
6. When in Doubt, It’s from Shakespeare… (SHAKESPEAREAN ALLUSION – cultural shorthand: patterns)
Hamlet: indecision, revenge, melancholyHenry IV: accept mature responsibilitiesOthello: jealousyKing Lear: greedy kids, wise fool
7. …Or the Bible – ALLUSION (Western Tradition!)
a. Before the mid 20th c., writers could count on reader familiarity w/ Biblical stories, a common cultural “stock”
b. Common Biblical stories with symbolic implications
i. Eden (Edenic): tempting women/serpents/appletree of life +
knowledge of good/evil; mythic fall from innocence; epic expulsion
ii. David + Goliath: overcoming overwhelming odds
iii. Jonah + Whale: refusing task, overwhelmed anyway
iv. Job: undeserved disaster; suffering; steadfastness
v. The Flood: rain=epic destruction; rainbow=promise
vi. The Apocalypse: 4 Horseman herald end of world; false prophets
vii. Biblical names of literary characters suggest biblical characters
8. Hanseldee and Greteldum (Jungian archetypes = symbols, situations, characters; “Collective Unconscious”)
a. Hansel and Gretel: lost children trying to find their way home
b. Peter Pan: refusing to grow up, lost boys, a girl-nurturer
c. Little Red Riding Hood and Big, Bad Wolves: See Vampires
d. Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz: entering world w/ its own rationally/operates under different rules
e. Cinderella: orphaned girl abused by adopted family; saved through supernatural intervention and marrying prince
f. Snow White: Evil woman who brings death to an innocent (apple! Vampire?)— saved by heroic/princely character
g. Sleeping Beauty: girl becoming a woman, needle, blood = womanhood; sleeps/avoids growing up saved by prince
h. Evil Stepmothers, Queens, Rumpelstiltskin (controlling female reproductive power!)
i. Prince Charming heroes rescue women (20th c. frequently switched—women save men—or used highly ironically)
9. It’s Greek to Me (more broadly, “Classical Culture” – Western Tradition)
a. Myth is a body of story that matters—the patterns present in mythology run deeply in the human psyche (Jung)
b. Odyssey and Iliad: Achilles = small weakness, strong man; Penelope = faithfulness; Hector = protecting family
c. The Underworld: ultimate challenge, facing the darkest parts of human nature or dealing with death
d. Metamorphoses by Ovid—transformation (Kafka)
e. Oedipus: family triangles, being blinded, dysfunctional family; fate; irony; inherited shame/familial dishonor
f. Cassandra: refusing to hear the truth
g. Aeneas + Dido; Jason + Medea): wronged woman gone violent in her grief and madness
h. Demeter + Persephone + Hades: mother love (epikleros – married to uncle/patriarchal line)
10. It’s more than just rain or snow
a. Rain: fertility/life; Noah and the Flood; Drowning (one of our deepest fears)
b. Why rain? plot device, atmospherics, misery factor (challenge); democratic (falls on just and unjust alike)
c. Weather Conditions (symbolically)
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rain is clean: a form of purification, baptism, removing sin/stain
rain is restorative: can bring a dying earth back to life
destructive: causes pneumonia, colds, etc.; hurricanes, etc.
Ironic: April is the cruelest month (T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland)
v. Rainbow: God’s promise never to destroy world again; hope; promise
of peace between heaven and earth
vi. Fog: signals confusion; mental, ethical, spiritual “fog”
d. Snow: Negatively (cold, stark, inhospitable, inhuman, nothingness, death); Positively (clean, pure, playful)
11. …More Than It’s Gonna Hurt You: Concerning Violence
a. Violence can be symbolic, thematic, biblical, Shakespearean, Romantic, allegorical, transcendent
b. 2 categories of violence in literature: character caused (shooting, stabbing, poisoning) and not character caused (“accidents” NOT
What does this type of misfortune represent thematically?What famous/mythic death does it resemble?Why this sort of violence & not some other?
12. Is That a Symbol?
a. Symbolic meaning not one-to-one except w/ allegory (Animal Farm)
b. Actions, as well as objects and images, can be symbolic. (“The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost)
13. It’s All Political
a. Literature tends to be written by people interested in the problems of the world; most works have a political element
Individualism/self-determination against conformity/stabilityPower structures/class relationsJustice/rights (sex, race, religion, ethnicity)
14. Yes, She’s a Christ Figure, Too
a. Characteristics of a Christ Figure:
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in agony
self-sacrificing
good with children
good with loaves, fishes, water, wine
33 years of age when last seen
employed as a carpenter
humble modes of transportation, feet or donkeys
believed to have walked on water
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wounds: hands, feet, side, head; outstretched arms
known to have spent time alone in the wilderness
confrontation with devil, possibly tempted
last seen in the company of thieves
creator of many aphorisms and parables
buried, but arose on the third day
disciples, 12 at first, although not all equally devoted
very forgiving
came to redeem an unworthy world
b. Why use Christ figures? Deepens sense of character’s sacrifice: thematically = redemption, hope, miracles
c. If used ironically, makes the character look smaller rather than greater
15. Flights of Fancy
a. Daedalus and Icarus
d. Interrupted flight generally a bad thing
b. Flying = temptation of Christ
e. Usually not literal flying, images of flying, birds, etc.
c. Symbol: freedom, escape, imagination, spirituality, return, love
f. Irony trumps everything
16. It’s All About Sex…
a. ♀: chalice, Holy Grail, bowls, rolling landscape, empty vessels, tunnels, images of fertility; ♂: blade, tall buildings
b. Why? < mid 20th c., coded sex avoided censorship; function on multiple levels; more intense than literal descriptions
17. …Except Sex. (sacrifice, submission, rebellion, supplication, domination, enlightenment)
18. If She Comes Up, It’s Baptism
a. Baptism is symbolic death and rebirth as a new individual
e. River Styx allusion (transformation/boundary of life/death)
b. Drowning=baptism, if character resurfaces symbolically reborn
f. Rain can be symbolic baptism, cleanses, washes
c. Intentional drowning can signal form of rebirth (choice)
g. Rebirth/baptism implied when character is renamed
d. Traveling via waterways can symbolically represent baptism
19. Geography Matters…
a. What represents home, family, love, security?
b. What represents wilderness, danger, confusion? i.e. tunnels, labyrinths, jungles
c. Geography can represent the human psyche (Heart of Darkness)
d. Going south=running amok and running amok means having a direct, raw encounter with the subconscious.
e. Low places: swamps, crowds, fog, darkness, fields, heat, unpleasantness, people, life, death
f. High places: snow, ice, purity, thin air, clear views, isolation, life, death
20. …So Does Season
a. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter: youth, adulthood, middle age, old
c. Fall: harvest, reaping rewards/punishments
age/death
d. Winter: hibernation, lack of growth, death, punishment
b. Spring: fertility, life, happiness, growth, resurrection (Easter)
e. Christmas: childhood, birth, hope, family
21. Marked for Greatness
a. Physical marks or imperfections symbolically mirror moral, emotional, or psychological scars or imperfections
b. Landscapes can be marked as well (The Wasteland)
c. Physical imperfection (caused by social imperfection) often reflects damage inside the individual and society
i. Frankenstein: real monster is the maker
ii. Faust: bargains with devil in exchange for soul
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iii. Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde: dual human nature
iv. Quasimodo, Beauty and the Beast: physical deformity opposite of truth
He’s Blind for a Reason, You Know
Physical blindness: psychological, moral, intellectual blindness
c. Blindness metaphorical failure to see: reality, love, truth, etc.
Sometimes ironic: blind see, sighted blind (Oedipus Rex)
d. Darkness = blindness; light = sight
It’s Never Just Heart Disease...
Heart disease = bad love, loneliness, cruelty, disloyalty, cowardice, lack of determination
Socially, something on a larger scale or something seriously amiss at the heart of things (Heart of Darkness)
…And Rarely Just Illness
Tuberculosis frequent (picturesque, mysterious, metaphorically rich); cholera rare (just gross; intestinal illness just isn’t sexy)
Tuberculosis, the “wasting disease,” gothic, translucent skin
v. Venereal disease: immorality OR innocence; suffer because of
Physical paralysis: moral, social, spiritual, political paralysis
another’s immorality (spouse or baby) exploitation of women
Plague: divine wrath; communal, large-scale suffering;
vi. AIDS: modern plague; lies dormant for years, victims
isolation/despair created by wholesale destruction; puniness of
unknowing carriers of death, disproportionately hits young
humanity against indifferent natural world
people, poor, marginalized; shows compassion or intolerance
iv. Malaria: “bad air” with attendant metaphorical possibilities
vii. The generic fever that carries off a child
25. Don’t Read with Your Eyes
a. Enter reality of the book; understand the text as having been written against its own social, historical, cultural, and personal background
b. Don’t have to accept values of another culture to step into a story and recognize universal qualities present
26. Is He Serious? And Other Ironies
Irony trumps everythingIrony doesn’t work for every readerculturally specific: if lost in translation, may not be recognized (offensive)
27. Test Case: A Reading of “The Garden Party” by Katherine Mansfield