Providence High School Sophomore
English Summer Reading
Title: How to Read Literature Like a Professor (revised edition 2014)
Autor: Thomas C. Foster
ISBN #: ISBN-10: 0062301675
Genre: non-fiction
“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 is traveling 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” (Rev. of How to Read Literature Like a Professor).
Works Cited
Rev. of How to Read Literature Like a Professor (revised edition 2014), by Thomas C. Foster. From Harper Perennial.
Amazon.com. 20 May 2015. <http://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Literature-Like-Professor/dp/0062301675>.
ASSIGNMENT
Goal: To gain insight into how to read text both for academic study and for enjoyment at a more thoughtful and analytical
level
How will we use this text? We will reference this text throughout the year with every major work we read and for some of
our supplementary texts. This text will come with you to each class meeting all year and we will begin right away
implementing what you have learned through your reading.
What is my assignment while reading this book over the summer to be prepared for the start of the year? READ the
text. THINK about the text. ANNOTATE the text.
What is annotating? It’s a conversation with the text for academic purposes. If you underline/highlight it - it MUST have
words to go along with it explaining why the items was underlined/highlighted.
What isn’t annotating? Highlighting/underlining without words. Words that don’t mean anything substantive, such as your
own personal commentary or random, non-communicative symbols.
How do I annotate this type of text? You will not be annotating how the author, Mr. Foster, creates meaning in his own text
(looking for his use of similes, metaphors, personification, etc. - as this type of text won’t employ those types of rhetorical
strategies to convey meaning). Instead, you should be making note of MAIN IDEAS and significant DETAILS of each
chapter, DEFINING WORDS and TERMINOLOGY, making CONNECTIONS, and SUMMARIZING the key points of the
chapter at the end of each chapter. This is an instructional text that is meant to help teach you how to more deeply examine
what you read - so when you annotate, you should be considering which parts of each chapter are the big ideas - make note of
them - explain using margin notes WHY those are the big ideas - maybe make connections with previously read texts that as
you read this text, you realize something analytically that you didn’t realize before. You must include a bullet point summary
of key ideas at the end of each chapter. You may use post-it notes if you would like, etc., but you are not required nor
encouraged to use a color-coded system, etc. However, your annotations should be MEANINGFUL in a way that will help
you more efficiently recall and reference this text throughout the year. Comments like, “no way!”, “that’s so weird!” or any
other sorts of randomness that sound more like a reaction to a bad commercial on television than an academic study of a text
are not helpful to you in achieving your goals. Remember, we will reference and add to this text all year, right from the start
of the year. Take your time as you read to think about and digest the concepts for a more meaningful study.
SAMPLE ANNOTATIONS
10 - It’s More Than Just Rain or Snow
IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT. What, you’ve heard that one?
Right, Snoopy. And Charles Schulz had Snoopy write it because it was a
cliche, and had been one for a very long time, way back when your favorite
beagle decided to become a writer. This one we know: Edward Bulwer-Lytton,
celebrated Victorian popular novelist, actually did write, “It was a dark and stormy night.”
In fact, he began a novel with it, and not a very good novel, either. And now you
know everything you need to know about dark and stormy nights. Except for one thing.
Why?
You wondered that, too, didn’t you? Why would a writer want the wind
howling and the rain bucketing down, want the manor house or the cottage or the weary
traveler lashed and battered?
[So...what about rain?] For one, it’s clean. One of the paradoxes of rain is how clean it
is coming down and how much mud it can make when it lands. So if you want a character to
be
cleansed, symbolically, let him walk through the rain to get somewhere. He can be quite
transformed when he gets there….He can be less angry, less confused, more
repentant,
whatever you want. The stain that was upon him – figuratively – can be removed.
Fog [a version of rain], for instance. It almost always signals some sort of
confusion.
Dickens uses a miasma, a literal and figurative fog, for the Court of Chancery,
the English version of American probate court where estates are sorted out and
wills contested, in Bleak House (1853). Henry Green uses a heavy fog to gridlock
London and strand his wealthy young travelers in a hotel in Party Going (1939).
In each case, the fog is mental and ethical as well as physical. In almost any case
I can think of, authors use fog to suggest that people can’t see clearly, that matters
under consideration are murky.