What is the main idea of How to Read Literature Like a Professor?

1-Sentence-Summary: How To Read Literature Like A Professor shows you how to get more out of your reading, by educating you about the basics of classic literature and how authors use patterns, themes, memory and symbolism in their work to deliver their message to you. Read in: 4 minutes Favorite quote from the author: I randomly came across How To Read Literature Like A Professor, and found out it was really popular. I’d love to help you read more and better, and my gears are constantly churning how I can help you do that ( hit me up if you want to hear my product ideas so far).

Summarizing this book is surely a good start. Thomas C. Foster is an English professor (surprise), and he uses many examples from classic books to show you how you can unlock what you read and figure out what lies beneath the basic level of the story. This book will not only make your reading more fun and more satisfying, you’ll also be able to harness what your learn in a much more professional way.

Here are 3 lessons to help you master the craft of reading:

1. Memory, symbols, and patterns are what hide the deeper message in any book.
2. One of the most common patterns is the quest structure.
3. Look for universal messages in books to discover which symbols authors use.

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What are the 5 elements of a quest How to Read Literature Like a Professor?

Foster asks the reader to imagine they are reading a story about an average sixteen-year-old boy named Kip during the summer of 1968. The boy rides his bike to the A&P to buy a loaf of Wonderbread; on the way, he encounters his crush, Karen, in the car of his enemy, Tony.

• At the store, he decides to lie about his age to a Marine recruiter, meaning he will be sent to Vietnam—or, alternatively, he sees a vision of St.
• Abillard in a balloon.
• This story is simply a hypothetical invention, but Foster explains that an English professor would read it as a knight going on a quest.

Although on the surface the story simply describes an average American boy’s trip to the store, Foster identifies different elements of the story that represent the key components of the quest narrative: a knight (Kip), a princess (Karen), a nemesis (Tony), a Holy Grail (the Wonderbread), and so on.

• This hypothetical account of the “quest” to obtain Wonderbread helps to demonstrate the concept of intertextuality.
• Just because a story might be set in 1960s suburban America does not mean it is disconnected from the medieval stories of knights and the Holy Grail.
• This comparison in turn suggests that literary genres that might feel far away from our own personal experience could be more relevant than we expect.

Although a story might be set in a time and place different from ours, the symbols and figures it employs (such as quests, crushes, and enemies) are often universal. In order to see how a boy’s trip to the grocery store to buy some bread can fit the archetype of the quest narrative, readers must view the story structurally.

• A quest narrative doesn’t need to be set in any particular time or place, but it does need to contain five structural elements: 1) a quester 2) a place to go 3) a reason to go there 4) obstacles along the way and 5) the real reason for the quest.
• The reason to go (3) is different from the real reason for why the quest takes place (5) because the real reason for any quest is to gain self-knowledge.

Although it involves “stepping back” from the story, reading structurally is also a form of deep reading. It means looking beyond the surface facts of the story in order to view the story’s components in an analytical way. Pay particular attention to the end of this passage; the reason why the quest narrative is so enduring is because the journey to gain self-knowledge is universal.

1. Foster turns to a real example, Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), which he claims is the best quest novel of the 20th century.
2. Some people find the book odd due to its “cartoonish” quality, yet Foster argues that many classic quest stories, such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Faerie Queen, share this cartoonish side.

Foster explains how The Crying of Lot 49 —despite its modern elements, including a female protagonist and setting in San Francisco—does indeed have the five structural points necessary to qualify it as a quest story. Here, Foster provides an example of how deep reading can make literature more enjoyable.

• He implies that the reason some people object to Pynchon’s “Crying of Lot 49” is because they don’t understand its cartoonish quality.
• However, if people read widely and develop their ability to pick up on intertextual connections, they will better understand (and enjoy) more works of literature.
• The Crying of Lot 49 is not the only contemporary book that fits the archetype of the quest narrative.

Other texts, such as Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Lord of the Rings, and even Star Wars can also be read as quests. Foster finishes the chapter by reminding the reader not to get stuck on figuring out the “right” or “wrong” analysis of a work of literature, as this is not what literary study is about.

1. Words like “always” and “never” do not have concrete meaning within the language of reading.
2. Rules such as those governing the quest narrative are routinely twisted and broken by authors reacting against previous literary conventions.
3. Although it might seem that Foster is encouraging the reader to follow a very particular path of analysis, in fact he is simply providing a framework—a representative example of what “deep reading” looks like.

Indeed, if the reader were to follow Foster’s example too faithfully, this would not constitute good literary analysis, as the important thing about interpretation is that it is unique.

What is literary geography in How to Read Literature Like a Professor?

Like the destination of a vacation, the destination or setting of a work of literature is hugely significant. Some writers, such as William Faulkner and Thomas Hardy, are tied to a very particular location—in both these cases, a fictional version of the area in which the authors themselves lived.

• However, most authors include a variety of settings even within a single work, and thus readers should pay attention not only to where the story overall takes place, but also the symbolic significance of the location of particular moments.
• In other words, they should be aware of “literary geography,” which Foster defines as “humans inhabiting spaces, and at the same time spaces inhabiting humans.” Analyzing the geographic location of a work of literature requires many of the same skills as analyzing weather and the seasons.

In both cases, there is a reciprocal relationship between the inner thoughts and feelings of the characters and the landscape they inhabit—although of course this relationship may be subverted, complicated, or rendered in an ironic way. Geography has the power to create particular atmospheres and to shape characters.

1. The idea of “home” can be magnetic, elusive, or suffocating, and many characters travel to either find it or escape it.
2. Geography can even be a character, such as the Vietnamese village in Tim O’Brien’s Going After Cacciato, which becomes a kind of enemy figure to the American soldiers.
3. Geography also instigates plot momentum; in E.M.

Forster’s A Room With a View (1908) and A Passage to India (1924), the disconnect between the characters and the setting they are in creates action that propels the story forward. Note the way that Foster routinely blurs the distinctions between different literary devices; action can be a symbol, characters can be plot, and geography can be a character.

This a typically analytical way of viewing literature. It allows the critic to view a work of literature almost like a machine, with different components functioning together in order to create a single (albeit highly complex) effect. Often, geography is “a metaphor for psyche,” meaning the external landscape of a literary work reflects the internal mind of one or more characters.

Frequently, characters travel to a particular location in order to find that their impression of that location was in fact an image of their own hearts or minds. There are also particular tropes of destinations in which certain things can be expected to happen; for example, Foster points out the tradition of sending characters south (to Italy, Greece, Congo, Vietnam, etc.) “so they can run amok.” Some of the examples Foster gives in this passage have occurred so frequently in literature that they are now considered clichés.

• The journey to an exotic destination that becomes a journey of self-discovery, for example, is so well-known that nowadays many authors would only present this narrative in an ironic way.
• Other landscapes have other specific associations within different literary traditions; examples include the prairie within American (and particularly Midwestern) literature, or the bog in Irish literature.

During the Romantic era, natural landscapes were celebrated as “sublime,” an idea that became clichéd and provoked backlash within later literary movements. Discovering the symbolic meaning of certain natural landscapes sometimes requires knowledge of the cultural and historical context in which a book was written.

Furthermore, landscapes have different meanings to different people—including authors, characters, and readers. Meanwhile, hills and valleys are also significant, with their own set of symbolic implications. High places can represent purity, isolation, life or death, while low places are often associated with people, crowds, dirtiness, and also life or death.

Note that neither place has any fixed meaning, but rather a possible set of meanings that can shift depending on what the location is contrasted against. Compared to the weather, the symbolic meaning of geographical locations tends to be more ambiguous.

What is the main idea or message of literature?

Theme is the main or central idea in a literary work. It is the unifying element of a story. A theme is not a summary of characters or events. Rather, it is the controlling idea or central insight of the story.

What is the difference between violence in real life and violence in literature?

Foster returns to Toni Morrison ‘s Beloved, Although the novel focuses on one act of violence in particular (Sethe’s murder of her daughter), this single act is part of a much broader phenomenon: the violence of the transatlantic slave trade. Violence may be interpersonal, but it is almost always related to larger cultural forces.

Furthermore, while in real life violence can be meaningless, in literature it often has multiple layers of meaning, whether symbolic, allegorical, religious, political, etc. Even when violence is depicted in order to show the senseless cruelty of the universe (such as in Robert Frost’s poem “Out, Out—” (1916)), this still a meaningful message about the world.

One of the reasons why people write and read literature is to make sense of a world that can at times seem senselessly unjust and cruel. This does not mean literature necessarily serves a redemptive function; as the example of Robert Frost’s “Out, Out—” shows, sometimes literature simply reinforces the idea that the world is senselessly cruel.

On the other hand, even this rather bleak conclusion is perhaps made slightly more hopeful by being placed in a poem, which is arguably a gesture of communication and solidarity. Violence is a huge topic in literature, and even authors noted for the lack of activity in their work (such as Woolf and Chekhov) frequently kill off characters.

Foster identifies two categories of violence in literature: violence that characters enact upon one another, and harmful events that happen to characters in order to advance the plot. Although it might seem strange to think of a character dying of heart disease as “violence,” Foster maintains that such plot points are indeed violent.

The distinction Foster draws between character-based and plot-based violence can seem unclear, especially considering characters aren’t real and are all actually under the control of the author. One way to understand it is by asking if there is a human perpetrator of the violence depicted within the book; if there is, it is character-based, and if not, plot-based.

Returning to the question of meaningful versus meaningless violence, Foster argues that the only major literary genre in which violence is “meaningless” are mysteries. In these books, the fact that a character has died (sometimes a terribly gruesome death!) is not important in itself, but only as a device that triggers the process of discovering how and why it happened.

1. In the rest of literature, violence tends to carry major symbolic significance. In D.H.
2. Lawrence’s Women in Love (1920), for example, the physical fights between Gudrun and Ursula symbolize clashes in the social system of industrial capitalism.
3. In Lawrence’s novella The Fox (1922), the murder of Banford represents the restoration of the traditional sexual order.

In order to understand the symbolic significance of violent events in literature, it is helpful to consider the fact that every act of violence is a struggle between two (or more) forces. Consider one of these forces—what does it represent, and what might it be struggling against? Through this logic, Foster is able to determine that violent acts between individual characters in a book are symbolic of much larger phenomena, such as social and ideological battles over class and gender.

The work of William Faulkner is enormously violent, reflecting the legacy of tension and turmoil in the Southern US. Faulkner explores the ways that violence can result from the restriction of people’s agency and bodily autonomy, such as when Eunice, a slave whose daughter by rape becomes a victim of incest, kills herself in Go Down, Moses (1942).

As Foster points out in this passage, characters can also commit acts of violence against themselves. Indeed, acts of self-harm and suicide were sometimes the only way for slaves to protest the unbearably cruel system under which they were forced to live.

Of course, character-on-character acts constitute only one kind of violence—what about Foster’s second category, violence chosen by the author as a plot device? Both Fay Weldon’s The Hearts and Lives of Men (1988) and Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses (1988) feature characters who fall to earth after their airplanes explode.

In Weldon’s novel, this event symbolizes a fall from innocence, whereas in Rushdie’s it constitutes a fall from a state of corruption into a new demonic existence. The difference in the resonance of these parallel violent events illustrates the fact that violent acts never mean the same thing in literature, even while they always mean something,

What are the big 5 basic elements of literature?

When you analyze a literary text, you will deal with basic elements of literature, like plot, theme, character, point of view, and setting.

What is the main idea of chapter 4 of How to Read Literature Like a Professor?

Chapter 4 Summary: “Now, Where Have I Seen Her Before?” – In this chapter, the reader learns about the importance of patterns in literary analysis. The trick to identifying any of the elements lies in finding a pattern, which is based on other stories readers may know.

Foster asserts that nothing in literature is original because it’s based on everything in human existence. Much of literature references other literature, but the idea cuts across genres so that “oems can learn from plays, songs from novels” (28). In other words, there is just one big story. As a result, everything readers have previously encountered can be brought to bear on what they are currently reading.

Connections between texts are referred to as intertextuality, Foster notes that students often say they have trouble making connections, and this difficulty stems from not having read enough; nobody has read everything and reading and analyzing gets easier over time as readers read more.

What are the 5 basic literary elements in literature?

The 5 Key Elements of a Story Explained There are five key elements to every story: plot, setting, characters, point of view, and conflict, Whether your students realize it or not, they naturally include all these elements when they’re telling a story to their families or their best fr.

It’s what creates the story’s flow, builds anticipation, and excites their listeners. We can all be great storytellers. It’s in our nature to enjoy a good story and feel compelled to share our own. But when students sit down at their keyboards, or start to put pen to paper, it’s easy to freeze up. Why is writing something down so much harder than chatting up a friend? Good news — it doesn’t have to be! Encourage your students to take some time before you start writing to figure out their five key story elements.

Need some help and direction? Read on for all the details they need to brainstorm the parts of their stories. With this newfound clarity, it’s easy to write a tale their whole class will love. Let’s get started!

How to Read Literature Like a Professor What is the difference between symbolism and allegory?

Foster says that if you’re wondering whether something in a piece of literature is a symbol, it’s pretty safe to say that yes, it is. What’s rarely clear is the exact symbolic meaning. In fact, symbols that only have one specific meaning aren’t technically symbols at all, but allegories.

1. George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945) is a good example of an allegory; it’s clear that Orwell hopes to convey one specific message about the nature of political power and revolution, a message that message is hidden behind the novel’s farmyard setting.
2. An allegory is a text (or image) that has a hidden meaning beyond the story being told on the surface.

Although this is similar to a symbol, the important distinction is that allegories have a single meaning that the reader (or viewer) is supposed to discover. Allegories are not designed to produce multiple interpretations that people will argue over, but rather to lead the reader through clues to find the one “true” meaning.

• Symbols, on the other hand, remain open to multiple possible interpretations. In E.M.
• Forster’s A Passage to India (1924), an alleged assault takes place inside a cave.
• What does the cave symbolize? Early humans lived in caves, and it’s possible the cave points to a sense of primitivism.
• But caves are also dark, and thus the cave could represent the (sometimes frightening) mystery of our inner consciousness.

If the cave is empty, it might symbolize the Void, the eerie sense of nothingness that has the tendency to fill people with a sense of existential dread. The cave is also in India, and the woman who thinks she was assaulted within it is white, suggesting that the cave might have racial connotations.

• Ultimately, whichever reading of the cave most appeals to us is likely the result of the individual background we have as readers.
• As Foster argues throughout the book, contrasting interpretations of literature are not a negative thing.
• Rather, they are productive and stimulating, and can make literature seem richer, more sophisticated, and more challenging.

It would be possible to argue that the cave in A Passage to India betrays several of the meanings Foster lists at once; however, generally literary criticism seeks to identify a single interpretation that the critic finds most interesting, resonant, or convincing.

Even when it seems likely that a given symbol will have a fixed, consistent meaning, this is in fact rarely the case. Mark Twain, Hart Crane, and T.S. Eliot are all male Midwestern authors who, despite coming from different generations, were at one point all alive at the same time. All three feature rivers in their writing—and yet in each case, the river takes on a completely different meaning.

This is not to say that there is never any overlap or intertextual resonance, but that a river in one work can have a totally distinct and contradictory meaning from the same river in another. Here Foster identifies one method of deducing meaning from a work of literature—considering historical context and intertextual connections—while showing that this method can be limited.

• After all, relying on historical connections alone might have us believe that Twain, Crane, and Eliot were interested in exploring the same ideas or themes in their work, when in fact this is not the case.
• Foster admits that his favored method of literary analysis tends to emphasize the historical context in which a piece of literature was written—this is called a historicist reading.

However, this is only one method, and should not be taken as definitive; indeed, the clashes between contrasting interpretations are a positive quality of literary analysis, and Foster encourages readers to take pleasure in disagreement. While it may seem logical to always take into account the historical context of a work of literature, there is in fact a strong backlash against this interpretive technique.

• Most famously, the New Criticism movement argued that texts should be considered simply as they are, independent of any context.
• Readers often assume that only objects can be symbols, but actually, so can actions and events.
• The poet Robert Frost is “probably the champion of symbolic action,” centering poems around the symbolism of acts such as mowing a field with a scythe (“Mowing” (1913)).

In this instance, the particular act of mowing stands for labor more generally, or solitary action, or perhaps something else entirely. As the example of Frost’s poem “Moving” shows, the symbolic meaning of a symbol doesn’t have to be wildly different from its surface-level meaning.

Indeed, the act of mowing and concepts such as solitary action or labor are clearly deeply connected. Foster advises readers to avoid making definitive statements about symbolic meaning, but also to trust their existing knowledge of literature as well as their instincts when it comes to figuring out what a given part of a text might symbolize.

Although readers shouldn’t invent meaning out of thin air, the act of reading is nonetheless an active, imaginative exercise, and we shouldn’t be afraid to be creative in our experiments with interpretation. In this passage, Foster suggests that engaging in successful literary criticism requires having a certain disposition—confident, but not arrogant.

What is an example of geography symbolism in literature?

Geography and Symbolism in Literature – Every time an author sits down to write a story, one of the first questions he asks himself is where will this story take place? An intelligent reader will recognize the geography symbols of a novel as a conscious choice on the author’s part to deepen the story’s meaning.

• Atmosphere
  • Example: In Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” the narrator describes the geography of the landscape in detail before ever getting to the house or the characters. By illustrating the dreary geography, he sets the mood of the story before it even begins.
• Character development

  Example: In Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees, the main character moves from her small hometown to the vast West coast. Her nature is reflected by this move—she opens her mind to new people and experiences and embraces personal growth.

• Plot

  Example: In E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View, the protagonist, Lucy, travels to Florence, where she falls in love and sheds off the societal stiffness she is used to. Forster’s use of geographic change is the prompt for the novel’s plot.

What does going south mean in literature?

To decline, deteriorate, fail, etc.

What is the main idea of the story?

What is the main idea of a story? – The main idea is the point of a story. It is what the author is communicating to readers about the selected topic. In another way, the main idea is the overall thought or summary of what the story is about. In other words, the main idea is the key thought about the topic.

What is the difference between the plot and the main idea of the story?

How to Tell the Plot From the Theme Plot and theme are both essential elements of any story, whether it is a flash-fiction story of only a few hundred words or an epic novel of more than 1,000 pages. Many people often confuse the plot with the theme because they both concern what the story is about, but they are distinct story elements, and each serves a different purpose.

Before you can understand how to tell the plot of a story from its theme, you have to know how to define these elements. Plot is the series of events that happen in the story, such as the hero fighting the villain or the lovers getting married. Theme is the main idea of the story, such as the idea that good always conquers evil or that true love is forever.

Plot is often used to create the theme, which is why many people confuse the two. One way to determine the plot of a story is to identify its elements. Plot includes the exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution. The exposition introduces the setting, the characters and the primary dramatic conflict.

The rising action includes the events that build the tension, leading to the climax, which provides the dramatic turning point for the story. The climax is usually a big scene, like the primary battle between the hero and villain. The falling action includes the fallout from the climax, such as what the hero does after winning the fight.

The resolution is the way the story ends, which may not answer all questions in the plot. The plot is the vehicle for defining the theme of the story. To identify theme, you need to ask yourself what insights can be gleaned from the plot. For example, if the villain wins instead of the hero, ask yourself what the message is in that.

1. The theme may be that there is weakness in goodness that can be exploited or that even if good triumphs, it may take several failures before success is found.
2. You must analyze the events in the story to determine the larger message, which is the theme.
3. Character development is also an important way that authors establish theme.

For example, a man who is set on revenge may learn the value of forgiveness, establishing the theme that forgiveness can help people let go of the past and move forward. To determine plot from theme, it is important to understand not just what the characters do but also what they learn from their actions.

What are the two kinds of violence in literature?

The Two Kinds of Violence in Literature Posted by | Apr 9, 2021 What are the two kinds of violence in literature? What does it mean when an author includes violence in a story? In literature, acts of violence are almost always a symbol of some greater kind of suffering. There are two common forms of violence: when a character harms himself or others, and when narrative harm happens to a character.

What is the theory of violence in literature?

To explain the significance of violence in particular works of literature, critics must analyze the interactions between human life history, specific cultural values, individual differences in authorial vision, and relations between the minds of authors and readers in response to characters.

What is the central idea or message of a literary work the insight the author wants to pass along to the reader?

The theme of a story is the underlying message or concept that the author is trying to convey to the reader. The theme of a story is generally an opinion the writer wants to convey through their storytelling.

What is the main idea of chapter 4 of How to Read Literature Like a Professor?

Chapter 4 Summary: “Now, Where Have I Seen Her Before?” – In this chapter, the reader learns about the importance of patterns in literary analysis. The trick to identifying any of the elements lies in finding a pattern, which is based on other stories readers may know.

Foster asserts that nothing in literature is original because it’s based on everything in human existence. Much of literature references other literature, but the idea cuts across genres so that “oems can learn from plays, songs from novels” (28). In other words, there is just one big story. As a result, everything readers have previously encountered can be brought to bear on what they are currently reading.

Connections between texts are referred to as intertextuality, Foster notes that students often say they have trouble making connections, and this difficulty stems from not having read enough; nobody has read everything and reading and analyzing gets easier over time as readers read more.

What is the main idea of chapter 13 in How to Read Literature Like a Professor?

Nowadays we tend to interpret Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (1843) as a festive story with a moral message, but in fact the story was written with a very particular political context in mind. Through the story, Dickens attempts to discredit Thomas Malthus’ view that giving more food to the poor would increase poverty, creating an endless spiral.

1. However, Dickens presents this criticism subtly, such that anyone without solid knowledge of Victorian opinions on social welfare would likely not pick up on the political message of A Christmas Carol at all.
2. Here Foster gives an example of when knowledge of historical context can be highly important.

Indeed, it is no coincidence that more political schools of literary criticism (such as Marxist or feminist criticism) tend to place particular emphasis on historical context, as this information helps to reveal the ways in which a particular text expresses political opinion.

Foster argues that writing with an explicit, straightforward political agenda tends to be unappealing to everyone except those living in the same time and place as the text was written, and who share the author’s views. On the other hand, “political” writing—note the quotation marks—is rich, fascinating, and important.

Foster argues that “all writing is political on some level,” and that one way to locate political elements in a work of literature is to examine how the lives of the characters fit within the society in which they live. Similarly, if a literary work features characters from the ruling class, an author might convey disdain for the hierarchical class system by presenting these characters in an unflattering light.

Again, historical context is critical here. Some texts depict members of the ruling class in order to criticize the class system, however many texts focus on the ruling class simply because, for centuries, this was dictated by social and cultural convention. Indeed, some authors deliberately deviated from this convention in order to defy the notion that the upper class were more interesting, important, or morally significant than the working class.

Discovering the political angle within a work of literature can be challenging, and it helps to bear in mind the author’s background, the historical context in which they lived, and any sociocultural traditions they might be writing against (for example Edgar Allan Poe and Washington Irving, while they hardly presented the USA as a utopia, nonetheless wrote in a way that was critical of the European tradition).

Some literary scholars, particularly those who are themselves politically-oriented, argue that every work of literature is political because it is “either part of the social problem or part of the solution.” Foster doesn’t quite agree, but does maintain that almost all works of literature somehow address the political world around them.

The difference between Foster’s view here and those of the scholars he identifies as more political is that Foster is primarily interested in the aesthetic dimensions of a work of literature, meaning the creative decisions the writer has made and the impact these have on the reader.

1. More political scholars may read literature less as an end in itself and more as a means through which to discover different historical realities and opinions, or to debate issues such as class-, gender-, or race-based inequality.
2. For this reason, it is very important to bear in mind the social and political context in which a work of literature was written.

This can be especially helpful because historically, many authors—such as women and members of the working-class—would have expected to have their work judged differently based on the social and political climate in which they lived. Some scholars argue that authors who are not white, male, or upper-class are “marked” as political whether they wish to write political literature or not.

What is the theme of chapter 12 How to Read Literature Like a Professor?

Foster says that if you’re wondering whether something in a piece of literature is a symbol, it’s pretty safe to say that yes, it is. What’s rarely clear is the exact symbolic meaning. In fact, symbols that only have one specific meaning aren’t technically symbols at all, but allegories.

George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945) is a good example of an allegory; it’s clear that Orwell hopes to convey one specific message about the nature of political power and revolution, a message that message is hidden behind the novel’s farmyard setting. An allegory is a text (or image) that has a hidden meaning beyond the story being told on the surface.

Although this is similar to a symbol, the important distinction is that allegories have a single meaning that the reader (or viewer) is supposed to discover. Allegories are not designed to produce multiple interpretations that people will argue over, but rather to lead the reader through clues to find the one “true” meaning.

Symbols, on the other hand, remain open to multiple possible interpretations. In E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India (1924), an alleged assault takes place inside a cave. What does the cave symbolize? Early humans lived in caves, and it’s possible the cave points to a sense of primitivism. But caves are also dark, and thus the cave could represent the (sometimes frightening) mystery of our inner consciousness.

If the cave is empty, it might symbolize the Void, the eerie sense of nothingness that has the tendency to fill people with a sense of existential dread. The cave is also in India, and the woman who thinks she was assaulted within it is white, suggesting that the cave might have racial connotations.

Ultimately, whichever reading of the cave most appeals to us is likely the result of the individual background we have as readers. As Foster argues throughout the book, contrasting interpretations of literature are not a negative thing. Rather, they are productive and stimulating, and can make literature seem richer, more sophisticated, and more challenging.

It would be possible to argue that the cave in A Passage to India betrays several of the meanings Foster lists at once; however, generally literary criticism seeks to identify a single interpretation that the critic finds most interesting, resonant, or convincing.

• Even when it seems likely that a given symbol will have a fixed, consistent meaning, this is in fact rarely the case.
• Mark Twain, Hart Crane, and T.S.
• Eliot are all male Midwestern authors who, despite coming from different generations, were at one point all alive at the same time.
• All three feature rivers in their writing—and yet in each case, the river takes on a completely different meaning.

This is not to say that there is never any overlap or intertextual resonance, but that a river in one work can have a totally distinct and contradictory meaning from the same river in another. Here Foster identifies one method of deducing meaning from a work of literature—considering historical context and intertextual connections—while showing that this method can be limited.

1. After all, relying on historical connections alone might have us believe that Twain, Crane, and Eliot were interested in exploring the same ideas or themes in their work, when in fact this is not the case.
2. Foster admits that his favored method of literary analysis tends to emphasize the historical context in which a piece of literature was written—this is called a historicist reading.

However, this is only one method, and should not be taken as definitive; indeed, the clashes between contrasting interpretations are a positive quality of literary analysis, and Foster encourages readers to take pleasure in disagreement. While it may seem logical to always take into account the historical context of a work of literature, there is in fact a strong backlash against this interpretive technique.

Most famously, the New Criticism movement argued that texts should be considered simply as they are, independent of any context. Readers often assume that only objects can be symbols, but actually, so can actions and events. The poet Robert Frost is “probably the champion of symbolic action,” centering poems around the symbolism of acts such as mowing a field with a scythe (“Mowing” (1913)).

How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster (BOOK INSIGHTS)

In this instance, the particular act of mowing stands for labor more generally, or solitary action, or perhaps something else entirely. As the example of Frost’s poem “Moving” shows, the symbolic meaning of a symbol doesn’t have to be wildly different from its surface-level meaning.

• Indeed, the act of mowing and concepts such as solitary action or labor are clearly deeply connected.
• Foster advises readers to avoid making definitive statements about symbolic meaning, but also to trust their existing knowledge of literature as well as their instincts when it comes to figuring out what a given part of a text might symbolize.

Although readers shouldn’t invent meaning out of thin air, the act of reading is nonetheless an active, imaginative exercise, and we shouldn’t be afraid to be creative in our experiments with interpretation. In this passage, Foster suggests that engaging in successful literary criticism requires having a certain disposition—confident, but not arrogant.