How to Read Literature Like a Professor - by Thomas C Foster (Hardcover)

About the Book

"A lively and entertaining introduction to literature and literary basics, including symbols, themes and contexts, that shows you how to make your everyday reading experience more rewarding and enjoyable. While many books can be enjoyed for their basic stories, there are often deeper literary meanings interwoven in these texts. [This book] helps us to discover those hidden truths by looking at literature with the eyes-- and the literary codes-- of the ultimate professional reader, the college professor."--Amazon.com.

Book Synopsis

The classic guide, now available in a hardcover edition--a lively and entertaining introduction to literature and literary basics, including symbols, themes and contexts, that shows you how to make your everyday reading experience more rewarding and enjoyable.

While many books can be enjoyed for their basic stories, there are often deeper literary meanings interwoven in these texts. How to Read Literature Like a Professor helps us to discover those hidden truths by looking at literature with the eyes--and the literary codesof the ultimate professional reader, the college professor.

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

Ranging from major themes to literary models, narrative devices and form, Thomas C. Foster provides us with a broad overview of literature--a world where a road leads to a quest, a shared meal may signify a communion, and rain, whether cleansing or destructive, is never just a shower--and shows us how to make our reading experience more enriching, satisfying, and fun.

This revised edition includes new chapters, a new preface and epilogue, and incorporates updated teaching points that Foster has developed over the past decade.

From the Back Cover

The New York Times bestseller is now available for the first time in hardcover. Thomas C. Foster's classic, a lively and entertaining introduction to literary basics, including symbols, themes, and contexts, is an indispensable guide for instilling a love of reading and unlocking the hidden treasures of literature.

While many books can be enjoyed for their basic stories, there are often deeper meanings interwoven in these texts. How to Read Literature Like a Professor helps us to discover those hidden truths by looking at literature with the eyes--and the literary codes--of the ultimate professional reader: the college professor.

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

Ranging from major themes to literary models, narrative devices, and form, Thomas C. Foster provides us with a broad overview of literature--a world where a road leads to a quest; a shared meal signifies a communion; and rain, whether cleansing or destructive, is never just a shower--and shows us how to make our reading experiences more enriching, satisfying, and fun.

With wit and charm, Foster makes the modes and meanings of authors from Shakespeare and Woolf to Steinbeck and Faulkner accessible. Whether it's Hamlet delivering a soliloquy or the glorious Twelfth Night feast in Joyce's "The Dead," in Foster's capable hands the joys of reading are opened.

Foster spent his career teaching literature and now puts the tools into your hands.

Review Quotes

"By bringing his eminent scholarship to bear in doses measured for the common reader or occasional student, Professor Foster has done us all a generous turn. The trained eye, the tuned ear, the intellect possesed of simple cyphers brings the literary arts alive. For those who've ever wondered what Dr. Williams saw in a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water--here is an essential text." - Thomas Lynch, author of The Undertaking
"I know of no other book that so vividly conveys what it's like to study with a great literature professor. In a work that is both down-to-earth and rich in insight, Thomas Foster goes far towards breaking down the wall that has long divided the academic and the common reader." - James Shapiro, Columbia University, author of Shakespeare and the Jews
"A smart, accessible, and thoroughly satisfying examination of what it means to read a work of literature. Guess what? It isn't all that hard, not when you have a knowledgeable guide to show the way. Dante had his Virgil; for everyone else, there is Thomas Foster." - Nicholas A. Basbanes, author of A Gentle Madness, Patience & Fortitude, and Among the Gently Mad
"Tom Foster's casual, unpretentious, yet brilliant How To Read Literature Like a Professor is a painless introduction to crucial - and sophisticated--skills of reading. What a sense of the comic! What a knowledge of modern literature! What good stories!" - Linda Wagner-Martin, UNC-Chapel Hill, author of Sylvia Plath: A Life