How to Read Lit Like a Prof Notes

Euripides’ Medea is a controversial play which explores the actions of the protagonist as a result of a moral dilemma. Immediately, the audience’s sympathies for Medea are stirred by the Chorus and Nurse who describe Medea’s suffering coupled with betrayal and immoral actions of her former husband Jason. Despite this however, the audience cannot help being disgusted by the extent Medea goes to in order to guarantee the questionable revenge of her traitorous husband. Although it is without a doubt easy to see that the sorceress’ situation is miserable because of the betrayal by Jason, it is nevertheless very difficult for the viewers to forget that she is vindictive and heartless due to the events that occur during the play’s climax.

Hearing, seeing and visualizing the future and our present is frustrating. Believing in what is called “reality” and “society” based off decisions that weren’t made by us, but by the past to protect the outcome of what should happen later. People search for clues to help stabilize and move forward in life in myths and many other sources. Myths are traditional stories that deal with a historical explanation of some natural or social event, usually associating with supernatural appearances. The ancient Greeks told their cosmos through teachings and tales concerning their gods and heroes, and the importance of the culture and ritual practices to show their natural state. The myth of the Amazons and the great story of Hercules explain the

Analysis: Compare chapter 20 :How to Read Literature Like a Professor-“…So Does Season” to part four (chapter 1) of The Fountainhead.

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.

Foster discusses the idea that when two characters eat together, that moment acts as a bonding experience and causes the characters to come together. I had never noticed the significance of a meal between characters before. After reading this chapter, I can think of so many moments in stories when the characters share a meal together to form friendships or come to a peace. In one of my favorite novels, Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult, Picoult writes that “Emma Alexis- who was one of the cool, beautiful girls…she rolled her wheelchair right beside Justin. She’d asked him if she could have half of his donut” (367). Splitting the donut between one of the popular girls and one of the quieter, nerdier boys was a representation of the deformation of the high school social classes. After reading this chapter, I could recall the significance of meals together in so many novels and movies but I never noticed this pattern before.

Intertextuality is the ongoing interaction between poems or stories. Romeo and Juliet, and the Titanic are two examples

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

-Flight is freedom. When a character has the ability to fly they are free from the burdens of everyday life.

In Thomas Foster’s book, “How to Read Literature Like a Professor,” readers learn how to look past the surface of a literary work to find a deeper or hidden meaning. Writers use devices, such as symbolism, imagery, foreshadowing, irony and allusion to reveal these meanings. If these are overlooked, important aspects of the story can be lost. One literary device that Foster emphasizes in his book is allusion. Every story has elements of another story, and Foster devotes Chapters Four through Seven explaining the meaning of allusion in works by Shakespeare, the Bible, and fairy tales.

This essay will be about the analyzing of literary devices that are discussed in this book. The professor in the book thoroughly describes these devices and the allusions and symbols that are involved in literature over the centuries. I will be discussing the specifics of the allusions and symbols of the bible and the Christ like figures in literature.

a quest has five elements: a quester, a place to go, a stated reason to go there, challenges and trials during the quest, and a real reason to go there

The third chapter of How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Thomas C. Foster writes of the recognizable pattern where a “nasty old man, attractive but evil, violates young women, leaves his mark on them, steals their innocence … and leaves them helpless followers in his sin” (Foster 16). In the fourth episode of the fourteenth season of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, the detectives discover a girl from an accident with a barcode tattoo who was thought to be part of a sex slavery ring. The detectives tried questioning the girl, but she refused to release any details about the slavery. After questioning, she was picked up by an older girl who also had a barcode tattoo. The detectives promised to help the older girl if she would just stay

How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster is an all-encompassing guide to literature. Thomas C. Foster sets outs to explain how seemingly each detail in a story has some sort of symbolic meaning that may not be easily noticed at first glance. These symbolic meanings can range from the more potent symbolism of the weather to the obscure deeper meaning of a supernatural creature in a story’s plot. As I was reading this book, I was amazed and somewhat taken aback to how much other works of literature are used as examples to validate Foster’s explanations. Well-known novels like Animal Farm, Shakespearean plays such as Hamlet, biblical stories, and Greek myths are referred to. It was immediately apparent that the author was very

In ‘Medea’, Euripides shows Medea in a new light, as a scorned woman that the audience sympathises with to a certain extent, but also views as a monster due to her act of killing her own children. The protagonist of a tragedy, known as the Tragic Hero is supposed to have certain characteristics which cause the audience to sympathise with them and get emotionally involved with the plot. The two main characters, Medea and Jason, each have certain qualities of the Tragic Hero, but neither has them all. This makes them more like the common man that is neither completely good nor evil, but is caught in the middle and forced to make difficult decisions.

Throughout this course, I have learned about what a myth is and all of the themes that fit into myths. The most common themes seen throughout the myths we have studied during this course are fate, pride and hubris, heroism, justice and vengeance, and beauty. I have thoroughly enjoyed learning about mythology throughout this course and I have always felt that the controlling question driving this course is, why is mythology so important to us, even today? It is important to know the answer to this question and to know about the different themes seen throughout the myths studied in this course.