How To Read Literature Like A Professor – Thomas C. Foster

Description

A lively and entertaining guide to literature and literary basics – symbols, themes and contexts – that shows you how to make your everyday reading experience more enriching, satisfying and fun.

What does it mean when a literary hero is travelling along a dusty road? When he hands a drink to his companion? When he’s drenched in a sudden rain shower?

Most lay readers tend to stay on the surface of a book and though there’s much to enjoy there, the sneaking suspicion that we keep missing something – a deeper meaning, a hidden truth, a twist on the ordinary – prevails. A road, in a novel, poem or play, almost always symbolizes a quest of some kind, sharing a meal may signify a communion-like bond between two people and rain is seldom just rain, but usually means a cleansing experience or a symbolic re-birth. This amusing and instructive guide to literature teaches us how to get more out of reading, simply by looking at literature with the eyes – and the literary codes – of the ultimate professional reader, the college professor.