How to Read
Literature Like a
Professor
by Thomas C. Foster
A Lively and Entertaining
Guide to Reading Between
the Lines
Introduction
“How’d He Do That?”
What is the language of reading /
the grammar of literature ?
“…a set of conventions and
patterns, codes and rules, that
we learn to employ in dealing
with a piece of writing” (xiii).
Conventions of stories
and novels:
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•
•
•
Types of characters
Plot rhythms
Chapter structures
Point-of-view limitations
Conventions of poems:
• Form
• Structure
• Rhythm
• Rhyme
Conventions can cross
genre lines
Example – spring can evoke our
imaginations to think of youth,
promise, new life, rebirth,
fertility, renewal…
Memory.
Symbol.
Pattern.
“…the three items that…separate the
professional reader from the rest of
the crowd” (xv).
“Everything is a symbol of
something, it seems, until proven
otherwise” (xv).
The professional reader “has a
predisposition to see things as
existing in themselves while
simultaneously also representing
something else” (xvi).
“Grendel, the monster in the medieval epic
Beowulf (eighth century A.D.), is an actual
monster, but he can also symbolize
(a) the hostility of the universe to human
existence ( a hostility that medieval AngloSaxons would have felt acutely) and
(b) a darkness in human nature that only
some higher aspect of ourselves (as
symbolized by the title hero) can conquer”
(xvi).
What does Sigmund Freud have in
common with a literary scholar?
“Sigmund Freud ‘reads’ his patients the way a
literary scholar reads texts, bringing the same
sort of imaginative interpretation to
understanding his cases that we try to bring to
interpreting novels, poems, and plays.”
“[Freud’s] identification of the Oedipal complex
is one of the great moments in the history of
human thought, with as much literary as
psychoanalytical significance” (xvii).
Sigmund Freud / Oedipus Complex
The Oedipus complex, in psychoanalytic theory, is a group of largely
unconscious (dynamically repressed) ideas and feelings which
centre around the desire to possess the parent of the opposite sex
and eliminate the parent of the same sex. According to classical
theory, the complex appears during the so-called "oedipal phase" of
libidinal and ego development; i.e. between the ages of three and
five, though oedipal manifestations may be detected earlier.
The complex is named after the Greek mythical character Oedipus,
who (albeit unknowingly) kills his father and marries his mother.
Speaking of the mythical Oedipus, Freud put it in these terms:
“ His destiny moves us only because it might have been ours – because
the oracle laid the same curse upon us before our birth as upon
him. It is the fate of all of us, perhaps, to direct our first sexual
impulse towards our mother and our first hatred and our first
murderous wish against our father. Our dreams convince us that
this is so.”
Chapter One
“Every Trip Is a Quest
(Except When It’s Not)”
The Quest
•
•
•
•
•
A quester
A place to go
A stated reason to go there
Challenges and trials en route
A real reason to go there
Chapter One
“Every Trip Is a Quest
(Except When It’s Not)”
“The real reason for the quest never involves
the stated reason.”
“[The questers] go because of the stated task,
mistakenly believing that it is their real
mission.”
“The real reason for a quesT
is always self-knowledge.”
Chapter One
“Every Trip Is a Quest
(Except When It’s Not)”
Quest Tale Examples
• Huck Finn
• The Lord of the Rings
• North by Northwest
• Star Wars
Chapter Two
“Nice to Eat with You: Acts of
Communion”
com·mu·nion Pronunciation: \kə-`myü-nyən\ Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin communion-, communio
mutual participation, from communis
Date: 14th century
1: an act or instance of sharing
2 (a)capitalized : a Christian sacrament in which consecrated bread
and wine are consumed as memorials of Christ's death or as
symbols for the realization of a spiritual union between Christ and
communicant or as the body and blood of Christ (b): the act of
receiving Communion (c)capitalized : the part of a Communion
service in which the sacrament is received
3: intimate fellowship or rapport : communication
4: a body of Christians having a common faith and discipline <the
Anglican communion>
Chapter Two
“Nice to Eat with You:
Acts of Communion”
“Whenever people eat or drink
together, it’s communion.” (8)
“Generally, eating with another is a
way of saying, ‘I’m with you, I like
you, we form a community
together.’ And that is a form of
communion.”
Chapter Two
“Nice to Eat with You:
Acts of Communion”
“…in literature…writing a meal scene is so difficult,
and so inherently uninteresting, that there really
needs to be some compelling reason to include
one in the story. And that reason has to do with
how characters are getting along. Or not getting
along.” (8)
Assignment #1:
Locate an eating scene from your
summer novel
and explain the
author’s purpose(s).
Include chapter & page #, brief summary of scene
(which characters are involved, what they are
eating/drinking) and WHY that scene is important.
Responses must be at least 250-words in length and
submitted to TURNITIN.COM no later than Sunday,
August 30 by 7:00 p.m.