How to Read Literature Like a Professor [Third Edition]: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Understanding Literature, from The Great Gatsby to The Hate You Give

(Paperback)

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Thoroughly revised and expanded for a new generation of readers, this classic guide to enjoying literature to its fullesta lively, enlightening, and entertaining introduction to a diverse range of writing and literary devices that enrich these works, including symbols, themes, and contextsteaches you how to make your everyday reading experience richer and more rewarding.

While books can be enjoyed for their basic stories, there are often deeper literary meanings beneath the surface. How to Read Literature Like a Professor helps us to discover those hidden truths by looking at literature with the practiced analytical eyeand the literary codesof a college professor.

What does it mean when a protagonist is traveling along a dusty road When he hands a drink to his companion When hes drenched in a sudden rain shower Thomas C. Foster provides answers to these questions as he explores every aspect of fiction, from major themes to literary models, narrative devices, and form. Offering a broad overview of literaturea 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 showerhe shows us how to make our reading experience more intellectually satisfying and fun.

The world, and curricula, have changed. This third edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect those changes, and features new chapters, a new preface and epilogue, as well as fresh teaching points Foster has developed over the past decade. Foster updates the books he discusses to include more diverse, inclusive, and modern works, such as Angie Thomass The Hate U Give; Emily St. John Mandels Station Eleven; Neil Gaimans Neverwhere; Elizabeth Acevedos The Poet X; Helen Oyeyemi's Mr. Fox and Boy, Snow, Bird; Sandra Cisneross The House on Mango Street; Zora Neale Hurstons Their Eyes Were Watching God; Maggie OFarrells Hamnet; Madeline Millers Circe; Pat Barkers The Silence of the Girls; and Tahereh Mafis A Very Large Expanse of Sea.

Author Bio

Thomas C. Foster, author of How to Read Literature Like a Professor and Reading the Silver Screen, is professor emeritus of English at the University of Michigan, Flint, where he taught classes in contemporary fiction, drama, and poetry, as well as creative writing and freelance writing. The author of several books on 20th-century British and Irish literature and poetry.