How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines

Foster discusses the long cultural dominance of 17th century playwright William Shakespeare in Chapter 5. He shows the prevalence of Shakespeare’s work by citing examples from television, novels, and films that are set in modern times that rework Shakespeare’s stories. Numerous aphorisms that are part of the English language originally came from Shakespeare’s work, such as “[t]he better part of valor is discretion” (35). Thus, Shakespeare is something of a lodestar in Western culture, with an oeuvre of work that inspire other writers. These incidents of intertextuality can appear between any grouping of texts, but Shakespeare’s pervasiveness in literature and his prolific output make his plays a repository for shared meaning.

In the previous chapter, the author explains that the Bible and a volume of Shakespeare were the only books carried by “pioneer families [who] went west in their prairie schooners, [when] space was at a premium” (37). This chapter explores Biblical references in literature, as the Bible is another text that is ingrained in the psyche of many Americans and citizens of other Western countries. Writers have long used biblical references to write modern parables or morality tales of their own. Even non-religious stories contain familiar themes from the Bible; for example, Eudora Welty’s story “Why I Live at the P.O.,” mirrors the prodigal son story. Foster argues that the Bible covers the full range of human experience, providing writers with significant potential for inspiration.

Another source of common knowledge can be found in children’s literature. Most readers know the most famous fairy tales, and writers draw on them as frequently as they drawn on Shakespeare and the Bible Writers know what readers expect from a fairy tale, and sometimes they play with that expectation to surprise readers or to present a new perspective. For example, Angela Carter recasts well-known tales in a feminist light, pointing out the sexism of the original versions. Authors choose to use as much or as little of fairy tales as they wish, as a small element or detail may be all a writer needs “to add depth and texture to your story, to bring out a theme, to lend irony to a statement, to play with readers’ deeply ingrained knowledge of fairy tales” (57).

This chapter continues the theme of shared knowledge with a discussion of myths. The author calls myths “a body of story that matters” (60), focusing not so much on whether the myths are true but rather on their qualities of being shared and having an influence on culture. The dominant set of myths for many Western cultures come from the Greeks. Foster illustrates how Greek myths in particular still appear in contemporary works, from James Joyce to Toni Morrison. He describes the myth of Icarus, who flew too close to the sun and crashed to earth, as an ongoing cautionary tale about parents and teenagers. He also discusses at length Homer’s Iliad as recast by Derek Walcott in his poem Omeros to demonstrate that the underlying themes of Greek myths, more than the details, continue to resonate.