How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines Review Chapters 6,7,8,&9

Chapter 6 “When in Doubt, It’s from Shakespeare” To be or not to be, that is the question “You know what’s great about reading old Will? You keep stumbling across lines you’ve been hearing and reading all your life.” (40)

Chapter 6 “When in Doubt, It’s from Shakespeare” To thine own self be true All the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely players What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet Double, double, toil and trouble; / Fire burn and cauldron bubble

Chapter 6 “When in Doubt, It’s from Shakespeare” Using ideas from Shakespeare’s literature allows instant recognition for the reader You may not have read all of his plays, but you can recognize a Shakespeare line a MILE away…

Chapter 7 “…Or the Bible”

Chapter 7 “…Or the Bible” “The devil, as the old saying goes, can quote Scripture.” (48) “So can writers.” (48)

Chapter 7 “…Or the Bible” Resonance Test…what it is? “If I hear something going on in a text that seems to be beyond the scope of the story’s or poem’s immediate dimensions, if it resonates outside itself, I start looking for allusions to older and bigger texts.” (54) Titles Situations Poetry Names Quotations from Scripture

Chapter 7 “…Or the Bible” A 20th century story that is rich with allusions “resonates with the richness of distant antecedents, with the power of accumulated myth…it becomes timeless and archetypal, speaking of the tensions and difficulties that exist always and everywhere…that story never grows old.” (56)

Chapter 8 “Hanseldee and Greteldum” “The ‘literary canon’…is a master list of works that everyone pretends doesn’t exist…but we all know [that it] matters in some important way.” (58)

Chapter 8 “Hanseldee and Greteldum” “Kiddie lit” is the common body of knowledge that writers use for the modern audience for parallels, analogies, plot structures, references.

Chapter 8 “Hanseldee and Greteldum” Snow White Sleeping Beauty Hansel and Gretel Little Red Riding Hood Rapunzel Writers are not retelling these tales – they are just adding “depth and texture” to their own stories using the “readers’ deeply ingrained knowledge of fairy tales.” (62)

Chapter 8 “Hanseldee and Greteldum” Irony drives a great deal of fiction.

Chapter 9 “It’s Greek to Me” MYTH “…the northern shores of the Mediterranean between two and three thousand years ago…Greece and Rome.” (66)

Chapter 9 “It’s Greek to Me” Troy Athens Ithaca Icarus and Daedalus The Odyssey The Iliad Aeneas Metamorphoses

Assignment – Choose a common mythological or fairy tale that is embedded within your summer reading novel. Explain the commonalities between the novel and the original tale. (“T” chart or Venn diagram is appropriate for this assignment, but be specific and offer details! Minimal effort=minimal grade)