How to Read Literature Like a Professor (2003) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

Characters/People edit see section history

• Toni Morrison: Add a description of this character.
• William Shakespeare
• Angela Carter
• Henry James
• T. S. Eliot
• James Joyce
• Stephen King
• D.H. Lawrence
• Ernest Hemingway
• Joseph Conrad
• W.H. Auden
• E.M. Forster
• Northrop Frye
• Edgar Allan Poe
• William Faulkner

Quotes edit see section history

• “There is only one story. Ever. One. It's always been going on and it's everywhere around us and every story you've ever read or heard or watched is part of it.”

• “Reading should be fun. We call them literary "works." Really, though, it's all a form of play.”

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• The quest consists of five things: (a) a quester, (b) a place to go, (c) a stated reason to go there, (d) challenges and trials en route, and (e) a real reason to go there.

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• Memory. Symbol. Pattern. These are the three items that, more than any other, separate the professorial reader from the rest of the crowd.

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• whenever people eat or drink together, it’s communion.

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• there’s no such thing as a wholly original work of literature.

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• The essentials of the vampire story, as we discussed earlier: an older figure representing corrupt, outworn values; a young, preferably virginal female; a stripping away of her youth, energy, virtue; a continuance of the life force of the old male; the death or destruction of the young woman.

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• ghosts and vampires are never only about ghosts and vampires.

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• The real reason for a quest is always self-knowledge. That’s why questers are so often young, inexperienced, immature, sheltered.

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• Here’s the thing to remember about communions of all kinds: in the real world, breaking bread together is an act of sharing and peace, since if you’re breaking bread you’re not breaking heads.

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• In those works that continue to haunt us, however, the figure of the cannibal, the vampire, the succubus, the spook announces itself again and again where someone grows in strength by weakening someone else.

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• What we mean in speaking of “myth” in general is story, the ability of story to explain ourselves to ourselves in ways that physics, philosophy, mathematics, chemistry—all very highly useful and informative in their own right—can’t. That explanation takes the shape of stories that are deeply ingrained in our group memory, that shape our culture and are in turn shaped by it, that constitute a way of seeing by which we read the world and, ultimately, ourselves. Let’s say it this way: myth is a body of story that matters.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• United States
• England
• Mississippi
• Michigan
• Vietnam
• India
• Paris
• Europe
• Dublin
• Ohio
• Rome

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Thomas C. Foster (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 808

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Language more for young adults and adults. Educational book, so self explanitory that the language isn't the most captivating.

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Books & Reading › Reference
• Books › Reference

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