39 pages • 1 hour read
Thomas C. FosterHow to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines
Nonfiction | Reference/Text Book | Adult | Published in 2003A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Whole of Human Existence as a Story
This book deals with many individual elements of literature in an effort to teach analytical skills to readers, but the overarching theme that ties them all together is Foster’s assertion that one story encapsulates all of human existence. Foster says as much several times in the book, and he devotes an entire chapter (the second Interlude, following Chapter 20) to this theme. When referring to stories, he writes that “[t]hey all take from and in return give to the same story, ever since Snorgg got back to the cave and told Ongk about the mastodon that got away” (194). He has some difficulty defining the story in specific terms because the story is so nebulous and all-encompassing, finally settling on the description of something akin to all of human existence.
This theme is meant to be reassuring to readers because it means that everything readers take in and process is connected to everything else. This phenomenon is part of what literary scholars refer to as intertextuality and archetypes. Foster explains those terms but also keeps it simple for the average reader, writing that intertextuality encompasses “a pretty loose category, which could include novels, stories, plays, poems, songs, operas, films, television, commercials, and possibly a variety of newer or not-yet-invented electronic media we haven’t even seen” (52).
The Grammar of Literature
Right from the start, Foster uses the word “grammar” in relation to literature, stating that literature has a grammar just as languages do. In that sense, this book can be seen as a primer for the grammar of figurative language. In this primer, Foster explains the rules involved in understanding the hidden meanings in stories and other works of literature. These rules help take the mystery out of reading literature as a deeper understanding can be learned and improved upon through practice. Foster emphasizes this point throughout the book, attempting to give even the most inexperienced readers confidence in their abilities. He writes in the Introduction that “part of reading is knowing the conventions, recognizing them, and anticipating the results” (xxvi) and recognizing the conventions comes the “[s]ame way you get to Carnegie Hall. Practice” (xxvi).
Authors and Readers Make Meaning, Together
Another theme running through the book is that readers are an integral part of the process of making meaning from a text. Foster writes that students often think there is one, and only one, meaning to any given element in a story, and that it comes from the author. Students often worry that they can never definitively know the author’s real objective and thus, will miss the intended meaning of the story.
Foster addresses this fear in the first Interlude (following Chapter 10), where he writes that no one can know for certain what is inside an author’s mind. Some connections and references in stories are more obvious than others. He argues, however, that even beginning writers like his students naturally refer to things they know in their own writing; it makes sense that professional writers—who are also prodigious readers—make connections to other works of literature. Foster returns to this point in the Postlude at the end of the book, where he advises readers to “take ownership of your reading. It’s yours. It’s special. It is exactly like nobody else’s in the whole world” (301). They should be open to ideas from others like teachers, but in the end, they should rely on their own experience to make meaning that speaks to them.
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By Thomas C. Foster
