Name: How to Read Literature Like a Professor
Rating: 3.340909090909091 (44 reviews)
ISBN: 9781417626106

Thomas C Foster

A fun and practical introduction to literature and literary basics--symbols, themes, and contexts--shows how to make everyday reading experiences more rewarding and enjoyable.

How to Read Literature Like a Professor

Thomas C. Foster

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 travels 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. This revised edition includes new chapters, a new preface, and a new epilogue, and incorporates updated teaching points that Foster has developed over the past decade.

A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines

How to Read Literature Like a Professor Revised

Lindy

I've been seeing How to Read Literature Like a Professor gassed up on various book-centric forums; lately it's second only to On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. As someone who more or less falls into the target demographic described in the introduction (an adult who has never formally studied literature), I found it excruciatingly basic, sometimes to the point of condescension.

The classic guide, now available in a hardcover edition—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 codesof 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. This revised edition includes new chapters, a new preface and epilogue, and incorporates updated teaching points that Foster has developed over the past decade.

What does it mean when a fictional hero takes a journey?. Shares a meal? Gets drenched in a sudden rain shower? Often, there is much more going on in a novel or poem than is readily visible on the surface—a symbol, maybe, that remains elusive, or an unexpected twist on a character—and there's that sneaking suspicion that the deeper meaning of a literary text keeps escaping you. In this practical and amusing guide to literature, Thomas C. Foster shows how easy and gratifying it is to unlock those hidden truths, and to discover 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 rain. Ranging from major themes to literary models, narrative devices, and form, How to Read Literature Like a Professor is the perfect companion for making your reading experience more enriching, satisfying, and fun.

a Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines

Alayna Wiezorek

If I could give this book zero stars I would.
I was assigned this novel by school so I didn't choose this book voluntarily.

The author is extremely pretentious in both the way he discusses himself and by the type of books he chooses as examples. Only occasionally in the book did I see an example that would reach a broad spectrum of people, he mostly used archaic texts that only a few modern people have read.

The examples he provides completely spoils the novels in discussion, making me want to skip the examples so that I can later enjoy books like Beloved.

How to Read Literature Like a Professor Revised Edition

Sam Pulliam

This is the book I wish I had years ago. I probably would have always been an English major if I had it. Highly recommend.

Ella (taylor’s version)

Basically a fun to read version of a textbook. I learned so many things about commons literary patterns that I didn’t realize before. Definitely recommend to anyone interested in English Literature, especially as a degree.

Jess

This was a very annoying book. 

I absorbed all the advice that he gives in the book, and I can see a difference in my "close reading" when analyzing text, so I can say that the book achieved its purpose. 

BUT as a student (part of his intended audience) reading this with a purpose of "learning how to read literature like a professor", I haven't read even 5% of the hundreds of works of classical literature that he uses as examples, and rambles on about for pages and pages. The examples and therefore a bulk of the text were practically useless. His examples consisted of 'info dumps' about plots in various books and what they 'meant' through an analytical reader's lens. His methods were helpful for about three chapters until they got complicated and unfamiliar, making the follow 12 (about) hard to follow and un-relatable.

Sara Gaspar Farinha

Um professor de literatura que decide fazer uma espécie de resumo daquilo que ensina na Universidade de Michigan-Flint. Olhei para a capa e tremi. Professor de Inglês. Análise de textos. Ler como um professor. Acho que estão a ver a ideia… Se o objectivo era examinar à lupa a literatura bem que podia enroscar-me no sofá, e preparar-me para descobrir a cura para a insónia (e se preciso). Mas depois, cruzei-me com ideias como esta…

“In literature there is no better, no more lyrical, no more perfectly metaphorical illness than heart disease. (…) Aside from being the pump that keeps us alive, the heart is also, and has been since ancient times, the symbolic repository of emotion.”

… Ou esta…

“Go to your bookstore or library and find novels, poems, plays, stories that engage your imagination and your intelligence. Read “Great Literature,” by all means, but read good writing. Much of what I like best in my reading I’ve found by accident as I poked around bookshelves. And don’t wait for writers to be dead to be read; the living ones can use the money.”

Classifiquei-o com 5 estrelas no Goodreads. E, não me arrependo de nenhuma. Thomas C. Foster é um comunicador nato que sabe aligeirar, ou adensar, quando é preciso. Fala-nos como um leitor, para além de professor. Alguém que ama ler e que compreende aquilo que nos falta, aos estudantes incipientes ou curiosos persistentes, para podermos abarcar um pouco mais das significâncias de uma história. Foi como se partilhasse uma chávena de chá, no seu sofá da sala, à frente da lareira, a ouvi-lo falar sobre livros e história e personagens. A paixão que ele lhes tem entranha-se em quem o lê.

Ver Opinião completa: http://sarinhafarinha.wordpress.com/2...

Nathan Griffin

Solid introduction for diving deeper into reading literature. I felt like Foster wrote this primarily as lover of stories rather than a professor privileging you to his professorial insight. While a pretty dry read that took me longer than I thought it would, his is writing is easy to read and his examples draw from a very diverse and wide-ranging selection of stories (not just books). His recommended readings at the end of the book were also great.

How to Read Literature Like a Professor

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