Summary Of How To Read Literature Like A Professor By David Foster

Madison Rogers
Honors English 10
McLellan
20 August 2017
How to Read Literature Like a Professor
Chapter one relays the fact that most common version of a quest involves a knight, a dangerous path, a Holy Grail, a dragon, an evil knight, and a princess. Foster narrows these perceptions in more general terms; a quest consists of a quester, a place to go, a stated reason to go there, challenge and trials en route, and a real reason to go there. Foster specifies that the soul reason (self-knowledge) for the quest never involves the stated reason. It is also important to know that quest are educational which is why so often the questers are young, inexperienced, immature, and/or sheltered.
In this chapter, Foster explains the literary significance

In this chapter, foster discusses a type of form called a Sonnet; which is simply 14 lines long and written almost always in iambic pentameter. Sonnets often take the shape of a square (since the height is the same length as the width). The shape makes them easier to recognize as sonnets since sonnets has few qualities that characterize them. Sonnets can be broken down into two types, a Petrarchan sonnet and a Shakespearean sonnet. Petrarchan sonnets uses a rhyme scheme that ties the first eight(abbaabba or abbacddc and sometimes abababab) , then is followed by a different rhyme scheme that unifies the last six(xyzxyz or xyxyxy). A Shakespearean sonnet divides into 3 quatrains and a couplet (which rhymes abab cdcd efef gg).
In Chapter five, Foster is quick to point out that there is no wholly original work of literature because, after all, you cannot create a story in a vacuum. Literature grows upon literature and stories grow out of other stories. He goes on to explain that intertextuality is the correlation and dialogue between stories in literature. The ability to recognize recurrences in literary work allows the reader to further understand the depth and richness of a