Preview

How to Read Literature Like a Professor Chapter Analysis

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1763 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
How to Read Literature Like a Professor Chapter Analysis
How To Read Literature Like a Professor

Chapter 1: Every Trip Is a Quest (Except When It’s Not)

In Chapter 1 the author explains the symbolic reasoning of why a character takes a trip. They don't just take a trip they take a quest. Structurally a quest has a quester, a place to go, a stated reason to go there, challenges and trials en route, and a reason to go there. Quests usually involve characters such as a knight, a dangerous road, a Holy Grail, a dragon, an evil knight, and a princess. The quest also involves the character to gain self-knowledge out of taking the adventure to the stated place where he or she is going.

Chapter 2: Nice to Eat with You: Acts of Communion

Chapter 2 tells of the symbolism that takes place while characters are eating a meal together. The author states that when people eat together it is saying "I'm with you, I like you, we form a community together." The meal also shows how a person feels towards another person. It can show whether you like or dislike the person. The author explains how the description of the food isn't just to inform you of what is being eaten. It is to draw you into the moment and help you feel the realism of that moment.

Chapter 3: Nice to Eat You: Acts of Vampires

In Chapter 3 the author explains in Chapter three how vampirism isn't always about vampires. Vampirism is a characteristic a character can portray, such as selfishness, exploitation, and rudeness. The character takes advantage of people, like a vampire would to his prey. Many authors actually use vampires, ghosts, or doppelgangers to portray vampiristic qualities instead of letting the reader infer those qualities into a human.

Chapter 4: If It’s Square, It’s A Sonnet

Chapter 4 tells about how sonnets are formed and how to identify a sonnet. Sonnets are in a square shape and they always have 14 lines in them. The author says that sonnets may be challenging to understand, but they are the most interesting poems because they are

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    In Thomas C. Foster’s, How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Foster talks about blindness not only as a burden, but as a gift. He tries to convey to the audience that blindness in stories goes beyond physical meaning. He also talks about how to catch important details early in a story or movie. The three main points Foster asserts in this chapter are sacrifice, commonly missed word usage, and if you want something known, make it known early.…

    • 546 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Chapter Three: The symbol of vampirism is a very selfish one. The traits of vampirism include; selfishness, exploitation, refusal to respect the autonomy of other people, using people to get what we want, placing our desires, particularly ugly ones, above the needs of another. An example of vampirism in 1984 by George Orwell is the character Julia. She is selfish in the fact that she is very independent and concerned for herself. “He fear of the unknown and continued torture in The Ministry of Love building caused her to crack under pressure. She explains to Winston, after the ordeal, that she didn’t give a damn what he suffered because all she cared about was herself.” (Orwell 292) She is…

    • 1338 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    10) “Literature is full of patterns, and your reading experience will be much more rewarding when you can step back from the work, even while you’re reading it, and look for those patterns.” pg.4…

    • 588 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the interlude and the eleventh chapter of Thomas C. Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Foster analyzes the different effects violence has in literature. Firstly, Foster distinguishes that there are two different types of violence in literature. The first form of violence is when a specific injury is brought upon a character by themselves or another character through “shootings, stabbings, garrotings, drownings, poisonings, bludgeonings, bombings” and other harmful means (96). Contrasting with this, the second kind of violence is general harm brought forth by the all-powerful author. The author does this in order to advance the plot or thematically develop the story. The greatest distinction between the two violences is, “no…

    • 417 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines by Thomas C. Foster is a book that explains there is more to literature than just a few words on a paper or a few pages in a book. Thomas Foster’s book portrays a relatable message to a wide based audience. This book is relatable for two reasons, the way it is written and the examples it uses. The book is written in a conversational manner, as if the reader was in a group discussion about books and writing. As for the examples, they are informative, descriptive, relative, and entertaining.…

    • 782 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    A sonnet is square shaped because of the fourteen line structure and its meaning is in its sentence just like in basic writing.…

    • 3169 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Sonnet

    • 376 Words
    • 2 Pages

    A sonnet is a form of lyric poetry with fourteen lines and a specific rhyme scheme. (Lyric poetry presents the deep feelings and emotions of the poet as opposed to poetry that tells a story or presents a witty observation.)…

    • 376 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Literal Vampirism: Nasty old man, attractive but evil, violates a young woman, leaves his mark, takes her innocence…

    • 3599 Words
    • 15 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    -There is no such thing as a wholly original work of literature. All books borrow situations, ideas, and themes.…

    • 1402 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Quest consists of a knight, a dangerous road, a Holy Grail, a dragon, one evil knight, and one princess…

    • 1615 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Chapters five of ' how to read literature like a professor' tells us that ; nothing is original, that everything is taken from something that has previously been told of a or wrote about. The road by Cormac McCarthy abides by this. When i was in the eight grade I read The Picture of Dorian Grey, When i was in the ninth grade i read The Twilight Saga, and last week i read Fifty Shades of Grey. All three of the listed books are derived from one another , in all three books reader is presented with an irresistibly sexy, mysterious man. All three books also contain some naive, sheltered girl who falls hopelessly in love with the man. The man in all of the books is corrupt in some way, rather it be a power hungry prince, a vampire or a "dominant".…

    • 299 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Thomas C. Foster indicates in “How to Read Literature Like a Professor” that usually when a blind person shows up in a piece of literature, he can see into the spirit and divine world, and can see things that the hero of the story is unable to see. While I don’t believe love is spiritual, I do believe that it takes a special eye to see it. In “The Fault in Our Stars” by John Green, Augustus’ best friend Isaac is losing his eyesight to cancer, and essentially going blind. Even though Isaac is losing his eyesight, he is still able to see and understand the complex relationship that Hazel and Augustus share with one another, and he can clearly see the enormous amounts of love that they have for each other just by being with them. I feel that Isaac…

    • 345 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    • “Every trip is a quest.” In the book How to Read Literature like a Professor it states in every novel “every trip is a quest” and consists of so many things such as a quester, a place to go, a stated reason to go there, challenges and trails en route, and a real reason to go there. In the book The Fault in Our Stars there is a scene that goes perfectly with this, when Augustus takes Hazel to meet her beloved author Van Houten.…

    • 800 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    According to Bauer and Traina book survey helps the reader to get a sense of what the writer’s purpose was for the book. Bauer and Traina (2011) state, “when one surveys the whole book, one begins with the literary product as the writer that we encounter in the text, the implied author, conceived it. We begin where the writer did. We begin by getting a sense of what the writer set out to do” (2011, p.79). Another important point made was, “They did not write bits and pieces (sentences and paragraphs here and there) and haphazardly slap them together” (Bauer & Traina, 2011, p.79). I liken reading a book, from the beginning, instead of reading a single passage, to that of seeing a movie from the middle…

    • 336 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In Charles Dickson’s novel, The Christmas Carol, when the Scrooge wake –up from his “dream” he went out and bought a swan for his poor assistants’ family for Christmas. By doing this it was kind of a peace offering, it showed that Scrooge turns a new leaf, and by doing so he was now accepted back into the community.…

    • 2895 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Powerful Essays