How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines By Thomas C. Foster ISBN # 006000942x Response Questions Introduction: How'd He Do That? How do memory, symbol, and pattern affect the reading of literature? How does the recognition of patterns make it easier to read complicated literature? Discuss a time when your appreciation of a literary work was enhanced by understanding symbol or pattern. –‘’When small children, very small children, begin to tell you a story, they put in every detail and every word they recall, with no sense that some features are more important than others. As they grow, they begin to display a greater sense of the plots of their stories – what elements actually …show more content…
In the Japanese light novel “Akuma no Eros,’’ Miu Sakurai acts as the young, virginal, innocent female and Satan acts as the both attractive and illusive older figure with corrupt values. The story revolves around Miu Sakurai; a high-school girl who is in love with her classmate, Shion Amamiya. Miu summons Satan through a book and wishes for Amamiya to fall in love with her and Satan demands her virginity in return. Satan’s spells do not work on Amamiya because he is revealed to be the archangel Michael who ends up confessing his love to Miu without the spells, but Miu has feelings for Satan at this point and Satan is more than willing to make the still maturing teenage girl decide between living her normal life or marrying him and living in hell. Thus Satan robs Miu of her innocence while fueling his desires. Chapter 4 -- If It's Square, It's a Sonnet Select three sonnets and show which form they are. Discuss how their content reflects the form. (Submit copies of the sonnets, marked to show your analysis). –My three sonnets that have been marked consist of two Shakespearean sonnets and one Petrarchan sonnet. For Shakespearean sonnets, there are three quatrains and a couplet; the couplet makes the final statement …show more content…
It’s achievable by anyone All you have to do is work hard Out came hegemonic culture The American Dream… To be white To be born into privilege To not have to worry about people deeming you dangerous because of the color of your skin To be society’s definition of a “man.” To me, hegemony is just a fancy word for inequality What are my dreams? No, my reality A young woman at the age of 31 raising her kids in The Bronx, New York City borough A woman who wanted nothing more than a bright future for her kids A woman who tried getting a job to make ends meet The worst thing that came out of that innocent little box? Suffering. Pain. Death. A woman brutally stabbed to death in a racial hate crime A woman I called ‘’mom.’’ Then there’s me A girl at the age of 17 A high school dropout In a homeless shelter with two small children to take care of Race? Class? Gender? I’m going to get a decent job. Race? Class? Gender? Appearance? I will make life better for the three of us! Race? Class? Gender? Appearance? Socioeconomic Status? Hope? But only in my dreams… Chapter 10 -- It's More Than Just Rain or
The motivation for the quest is implicit- the stated reason for going on the journey is
In “How to read literature like a professor” by Thomas Foster he explains different literary techniques that writers use when writing a story. Some of these techniques were symbolism, tone, major conflicts, foreshadowing and using certain settings. Even though all of these techniques are important to the story, symbolism is more important because it is used the most throughout the book. Symbolism is the use of people or objects to portray a certain idea or quality of something.
The Hobbit is a novel that is actually a prequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. In How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Foster explains a vast amount of archetypes. I will be applying the archetypes in the book “How to Read Literature like a Professor” to Bilbo Baggins’ journey.
As I was reading How to Read Literature Like a Professor, I was thinking about how much I have missed in the books I have read due to not knowing how to look for certain literary devices. Something as simple as not knowing how to read between the lines caused me to miss out on points the author was trying to make. Over the course of reading How to Read Literature Like a Professor, I have learned many ways to analyze literature that I did not know before.
Shakespeare follows the English style of sonnets, while Collins partially follows the Petrarchan style. Both sonnets include fourteen lines, a defining feature of the sonnet form. “My mistress’ eyes are…” consists of three quatrains that describes his argument on love cliches, and ends with a couplet, the turning point of English sonnets. The sonnet consists of ten syllables each line, following the rhythm of the iambic pentameter rule. Shakespeare’s sonnet follows the usual rhyme scheme of an English sonnet: abab cdcd efef gg. Collins attempts to stray from the general sonnet principles in contrast with Shakespeare. “Sonnet” loosely follows the Petrarchan style, as the lines are grouped into one octave and one sestet in structure. Collins’s “Sonnet” does not have a rhyme scheme, nor does the poem follow iambic pentameter. His sonnet does, however, present his turn in line 9, the beginning of the sestet. Collins begins poking fun at English sonnets in the octave, but then turns to joke at Petrarchan forms. Both sonnets have a lighthearted, humorous tone and parody classic styles of sonnets in different ways.
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.
In the book “How To Read Literature Like A Professor” by Thomas C. Foster, many elements are brought to the reader’s attention. Three of these elements, happen to connect with the novel, “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time” written by Mark Haddon.
Intertextuality is the ongoing interaction between poems or stories. Romeo and Juliet, and the Titanic are two examples
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.
-Flight is freedom. When a character has the ability to fly they are free from the burdens of everyday life.
In the novel How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Thomas Foster gives evidence of every season having a symbolic meaning in different pieces of literature. In most cases, the seasons can represent certain times in a person’s life, such as death or the renewal of life. Foster states that the seasons may also represent times of decline, dormancy, awakening, and even times of passion. Foster then gives examples of how the seasons are interpreted in other pieces of literature, such as Shakespeare. This makes the reader question if the seasons are symbolic in other pieces of literature and if the author used a specific season on purpose to help portray the meaning of the story they are trying to tell.
Since its introduction in the 1530s, nearly every major British and American poet has made use of the form" (Sonnet xxi). In Versification, James McAuley defines that the sonnet is, "In the strict sense, a fourteen-line poem usually in iambic pentameters. The Italian or petrachan type, consists of an octet, usually rhymed cdecde or in some permutation of these. The English sonnet type consists of three quatrains plus a concluding couplet, rhymed variously, the Shakespearian form being abab cdcd efef gg. In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century use, the term was also loosely applied to any lyric poem, especially a love-poem, as in [John] Donne's (1572-1631) Songs and Sonnets" (82).
Hegemony is a huge concept described in Henrik Ibsen ’s play Hedda Gabler. Henrik Ibsen particularly portrays the issues with masculine hegemony in this play. Hegemony is the dominance of one social group over another. In Hedda Gabler, Ibsen particularly displays masculine hegemony: the social group of men being dominant over women.
In contemporary society, hegemonic masculinity is defined by physical strength and boldness, heterosexuality, economic independence, authority over women and other men, and an interest in sexual relationships. While most men do not embody all of these qualities, society supports hegemonic masculinity within all its institutions, including the educational institute, the religious institute and other institutes which form the ideological state apparatus.
Over a hundred sonnets written by William Shakespeare consistently contain crisp creative words in a fourteen line pattern. The patterns of lines are broken down into three quatrains of four lines a piece followed by a rhymed couplet. These sonnets all have the same meter, first eight lines describing a problem followed by the four lines of response.