How To Read Literature Like A Professor Chapter 1 Summary

William Shakespeare is the most influential English writer that ever existed. Though he may not have invented all of the literary tools we use today, he popularized them in his works. Many are considered to be essential in literature, as they add necessary detail and plot. Charles Dickens is also one of the most influential writers in English history. Though he was influential on his own, a lot of his style is based off of Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, are two of the most celebrated pieces of literature of all time. 250 years separate these works, yet their similarities could not be more obvious. Shakespeare employed these literary tools along with his understanding of the flaws in human nature so effectively that they continue to be relied upon in modern texts to keep audiences captivated.

There has to be a compelling reason to include a meal scene in the story because they’re typically boring.

The first chapter of Thomas C. Foster’s guide to finding symbolism and motifs in literature, How To Read Literature Like a Professor, details the literary plot device of a quest and how to identify one in a novel. He introduces the chapter by explaining how a seemingly normal trip to the grocery store is a quest because it is structurally a quest. The hero, a boy named Kip, like every other hero in a quest, confronts various trials (his jealousy of another boy and his rejection by the girl he likes) in search of a “Holy Grail” (a loaf of bread). According to Foster, there are five components of a quest, all of which can be found in Kip’s story. The first structural component is the quester, or the character who is undertaking the quest, consciously or not. This character is known as the hero or heroine of the story, which in this case is Kip. The second and third elements are the “declared” purpose of the quest: a location that the hero must travel to and a reason to go there, which would be Kip’s search for a loaf of bread at the grocery store. Sometimes,

In his book “How to Read Literature Like a Professor,” Thomas C. Foster provides a list of attributes that a fictional character may have if they are a symbolic Christ Figure in their story. The list consists of characteristics such as “very forgiving” and “came to redeem an unworthy world.” In Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” although the Old Man is thought to be an angel by the awe struck people around him, it is possible to claim that he is a Christ Figure. While the Old Man doesn’t turn water into wine, he seems to have something with the odd “miracles” occurring in the town. The Old Man’s ragged appearance is also an attribute that should be accounted for. Foster explains that “he’s dirty and unkempt and bug-ridden,

He isn’t always reinvented by writers. Songs are a type of literature and the people who write songs are writers. I can tell you for a fact when songwriters Nicki Minaj, Polow da Don, Sir Mix-a-Lot, Jonathan Solone-Myvett, Marcos Palacios, and Ernest Clark were writing the famous song Anaconda, they were not thinking of ways they could reinvent Shakespeare. If they were, I’d listen to the song more often. Unless I’m missing something and Shakespeare wrote about a guy named Michael that used to ride motorcycles. The song Stressed Out written by Tyler Joseph also doesn’t reinvent Shakespeare. The song talks about stress and how growing older doesn’t make your fears shrink. The Phantom Of the Opera, a very original work of art that does not reinvent Shakespeare. From the plot to the conflict, The Phantom Of the Opera was extremely original. Even the characters and their personalities are

Romeo and Juliet was written by William Shakespeare as a play for the theatre. William Shakespeare took his idea from an Italian folk story and is heavily influenced by sonnets which where developed by Francesco Petrarch an Italian poet. Shakespeare took most of his inspiration for Petrarch for demonstrating love with in the poem.

Shakespeare’s influence is especially prevalent in media and entertainment. Recent films, for example, copy his unique plot lines. Renowned Broadway musical and movie West Side Story retells the story of Romeo and Juliet. West Side Story tells the tale of two lovers separated by family expectation’s and feuds, mirroring Romeo and Joliet. Popular films Macbeth and 0 copy the unique plot lines of Shakespeare’s famous play’s Macbeth, and Othello (Dyce) .

Over time, William Shakespeare has become a literary genius that many authors, screenwriters, and playwrights have drawn influence from. The influence of Shakespeare has been seen from movies like She’s The Man to musicals like West Side Story to books like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. As one of the first featured playwrights of his time, Shakespeare himself did not have as many tropes and events to write about like modern writers do and would have had to draw inspiration from life around him and texts that had been written at the time. Even if a person could not read in sixteenth century Catholic, and then Protestant, England, they probably had a general idea of what the Bible was and the stories included. The Bible was a source of influence for many morality plays and even small collections of short stories like The Canterbury Tales. Roland Barthes, a theorist on textualism, would say that old texts like the Bible contain codes that can be found in texts even today. From an intertextual reading of his plays like King Lear, Much Ado About Nothing, King Henry IV, Part I, and The Tempest, it can be argued that Shakespeare drew his inspiration for the betrayal in these plays from Biblical stories like the story of Jacob and Esau.

William Shakespeare, as did most writers of his time, took the basis for the stories he wrote from other texts. He would use source poems or mythology in order to write his own works. Romeo and Juliet, for example, can be compared to the tragedy of Pyramus and Thisby. Plays such as Richard III and Julius Caesar are artistic accounts of historic events. The Tempest, however, is commonly perceived as an original story. Many critics feel that this was the only story of his that was entirely created by Shakespeare. This is not the case. In fact, there are several sources from which he very much drew inspiration for this tale. Shakespeare used

Shakespeare wrote his plays, poems, and other works during the time of Elizabethan England. This is a very interesting time period in history because many new revolutions and reforms were taking place. The most important one regarding Shakespeare was the Italian Renaissance. You see, Early Modern English which is what we call the English that Shakespeare wrote in was very messy regarding its structure and vocabulary when you compared it to languages such as Latin and Greek. When Shakespeare was starting to write his works, the English language was going through incredible changes, absorbing and integrating words from other languages due to the events that were happening in the 1600s such as colonization, exploration, war, and others. There was a huge return to philosophical thinking in Italy and a new way of expressing ideas that we today call the Renaissance.

William Shakespeare is a well-known author. He was a very popular writer and many people enjoyed the type of writing he does. For that reason, “Shakespeare’s history plays were so successful in the 1590s’ London theatre that the editors of Shakespeare’s complete works, in 1623, chose to group his dramatic output under three headings: comedies, histories, and tragedies. The genre established itself by sheer force of its compelling popularity” (“Shakespeare” 1). His theater made him more popular. With that said, his plays “are now performed and read more often and in more countries than ever before” (“Shakespeare” 1). Mainly, every freshman class in the United States reads Romeo and Juliet because the history and excellence that is involved

Students have been learning about William Shakespeare’s greatest works for years. They have been taught that he was the greatest writer of his time and about how his works still live on today. Many people still believe that he was the mastermind behind the beautiful stories of Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet, however this is not true. People have been taught for centuries that Shakespeare wrote every one of his works, however evidence shows that he has stolen ideas and that he might not be the author of his famous works.

The topic of William Shakespeare has become quite controversial over the role that he, and his plays, have in our English curriculum. William Shakespeare is, and forever will be, “an influence on the English language more than any other writer in history” (HISTORY). With many well known plays such as Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and The Tempest, William shakespeare expresses the use of many literary skills and and styles in which is taught in today’s English curriculum.

William Shakespeare’s motivations and influences of his writings. Indeed, mostly came from poems, older novels, like Latin and Greek, and many were from other writers. Also, Shakespeare had two favorite authors that he used for inspiration. Those two authors are Plutarch and Geoffrey Chaucer. Furthermore, Plutarch made a book that consists of biographies of notable soldiers and statesmen. Another thing, Plutarch book was translated by Sir Thomas North. Additionally, Shakespeare used the translated book to use as inventiveness for Antony and Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, Timon of Athens, and many other plays. Equally, Geoffrey Chaucer inspired William to write his plays. Likewise, Geoffrey Chaucer was a poet and created many poems. William

Shakespeare was inspired by Arthur Brooke and William Painter but added more to the plot of Romeo and Juliet, including characters Mercutio and Paris. While writing Romeo and Juliet, along with his other books, he made many of the words we use today. Some of these include eyeball, fashionable, and uncomfortable.