How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines

In Chapter 24, Foster states that to truly understand a text, we have to see it through the eyes of someone who exists at the time and place in which the text was produced. For example, he finds the anti-Semitism in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice to be less offensive than the anti-Semitism of Ezra Pound’s Cantos, and he bases his opinion on a continuum of offensiveness. After reading Foster’s explanation, where do you stand on the issue? What constitutes or defines “offensive material” in your opinion? 

Choose a favorite fairy tale and analyze its archetypes, including the characters and the narrative elements. Support your response with evidence from the text. 

Read T. S. Eliot’s poem “The Wasteland” and watch the 1991 film The Fisher King, both of which are based on the myth of the fisher king. Compare the two and how each uses the legend. What is the legend about? Define the legend and then explain with specific examples the shared elements of these works.

Select a short story and analyze it, using Foster’s two questions in Chapter 27. These are “What does the story signify?” and “How does it signify?” (See page 282 for more explanation.) Be sure to discuss characters, setting, and any intertextual references that you notice. 

Examine the tone of Foster’s writing. How does his word selection and his conversational approach enhance or detract from his message? Select specific examples of words and phrases from the text to support your response.

Hemingway, among other writers, often employs the use of irony. According to Foster’s discussion and definition of irony, how does irony affect a reader’s experience of a work of literature? Does irony encourage intellectual or emotional insight from the point of view of the reader, or both? Support your answer with examples from Foster’s text and/or from other works of literature you know. 

Foster believes that a cooperative process between reader and writer is essential to the making of meaning. Select one of the titles Foster mentions and analyze the meaning-making process according to Foster’s approach. Start by identifying the steps you must take in order to work with the writer to understand the work of literature you selected.

Foster employs a writing style that mimics the back-and-forth dynamics of an academic conversation between student and teacher. What does his writing style reveal about him as an educator? As a lover of literature?