How to Read Literature like a Professor Now, Where Have I Seen Her Before? Chapter 5

1. How to Read Literature like a ProfessorNow, Where Have I Seen Her Before?Chapter 5 By Brett Winnegan

2. Chapter 5 • If you pay attention to what you are reading, you will see patterns, archetypes, and recurrences. • When you read, you should connect themes, ideas, or characters to other books. • “If you read enough and give what you read enough thought, you begin to see patterns, archetypes, recurrences” (Foster 29).

3. Chapter 5 • There is only one story, that is endlessly repeated—So when reading you should use prior text consciously and purposefully. • Stories grow out of other stories, poems out of other poems. • “writers use prior texts quite consciously and purposefully” (Foster 30).

4. Chapter 5 • When we read we recognize things from other books we’ve read and begin to compare them. • Critics call the dialogue between old text and new text intertextuality. • It is the ongoing interaction between stories. • “Critics speak of this dialogue as intertextuality” (Foster 34).

5. Chapter 5 • After readers relate things to another book they must reconsider, characters, situations, and events in the novel. • Once that happens our reading changes from reading what's on the page to actually relating to it. • “readers must reconsider characters situations, events in the novel” (Foster 31).

6. Chapter 5 • When we become aware that our text is related to other texts, we can see more similarities and correspondences. • Old text reveals itself in many ways, from side references to lengthy quotations. • “ and they often indicate the presence of this conversation by invoking the older texts with anything from oblique references to extensive quotations” (Foster 35).

7. Chapter 5 • If the story is good but, you don’t catch the references, it doesn’t mean you’ve done anything wrong • But, if you do see the references then you will have a much better understanding and it will be much more meaningful. • “If the story is good but you don’t catch allusions and references and parallels, then you’ve done nothing worse than read a good story “ (Foster 36).

8. Chapter 5 • You can apply this information when you are reading Great Expectations byrelating characters to characters from other books like relating Mrs. Joe to the Wicked Witch from the Wizard of Oz. • “She was not a good-looking woman, my sister, and I had a general impression that she must have made Joe Gargery marry her by hand” (Dickens 5).

9. Chapter 5 • You can use this information in everyday life because when you are in certain situations you can apply a previous situation or maybe even a book that you’ve read to help you with what you might be doing at the time.

10. Works Cited Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. New York: Bantam Dell, 1860 Print. Foster, Thomas C. How to Read Literature Like a Professor. New York: Harper-Collins Publishers, Inc., 2003. Print.