How to Read Literature Like a Professor

1. How to Read Literature Like a Professor Chapter 8 Hanseldee and Greteldum By Ben Qin Geach Period 3 September 22nd, 2011

2. History Repeats Itself (Chapter Overview) • In this chapter, Hanseldee and Greteldum, Chapter 8 in How to Read Literature Like a Professor, by Thomas C. Foster, Foster describes in the first sentence as how “we’re dealing in this case, however, with a pretty loose category” and it includes “novels, stories, plays, poems, songs, operas, films, television, commercials, and possibly a variety of newer or not-yet-invented electronic media we haven’t even seen” (Foster 58). • Over the chapter, Foster gives us many examples of how modern-day writers use old fairy tale characters in a modernized way to enhance their own literature.

3. The Cannon and What Goes In It • Foster lets us think of literature “in a more canonical stage” (Foster 58). • According to the author, “a great deal of argument goes into what—and more important who—is the cannon” which means whose work gets studied in college courses (Foster 58). • As Foster describes the cannon, he also includes how “one of the problems with the diversification of the cannon is that modern writers can’t assume a common body of knowledge on the part of their readers” due to the fact that “readers know varies so much from what they did” due to the evolution of literature and along with it, the minds of the readers (Foster 59). • Back in the old days, “Virginia Woolf, for example was the only modern British woman writer who made the cut at a lot of schools. Nowadays, she’ll likely be joined by Dorothy Richardson, Mina Loy, Stevie Smith, Edith Sitwell” and many others (Foster 58).

4. The First Way • The first way that Foster shows us on how authors use old stories to enhance their writing is how they change the characters to modernize them and “makes use of our knowledge of the original story by employing signs we’ll recognize as standing in for the parts we’re familiar with: since we already know the story” (Foster 59-60). • This is used as an example as the author describes The Bloody Chamber as “a collection of stories that tear the roof off the old, sexiest fairy tales” to create revolutionary, feminist amendments (Foster 60).

5. However… • However, the first way is not the only method to use old stories. • Coover and Carter “put emphasis on the old story itself, while most writers are going to dredge up pieces of the old tale to shore up aspects of their own narratives without placing the focus on” Hansel and Gretel or Rapunzel(Foster 60). • To put this in a modern day situation, imagine the story line of Hansel and Gretel as we go over a hypothetical situation.

6. The Past Bites Back • Keeping the story of Hansel and Gretel in mind, imagine our hypothetical situation from the point of a writer • Imagine that there’s a pair of young lovers, and they get lost on a journey. “They’ve taken a wrong turn, suburban types with a BMW maybe, and they’re in a part of town that is wilderness as far as they’re concerned and their only option is a crack house” (Foster 61). • This is a perfect example of a modern day example of a fairy dramatic situation such as in The Gingerbread Man. No crumbs, no gingerbread house, not even related to the story. • Many authors use examples such as our hypothetical situation to enhance their literature by adding emphasis to the corresponding elements between the two tales.

7. The Last Lesson • When using a past fairy tale in this manner, you should keep in mind that you don’t have to use the whole story. “Sure, it has X, Y, and B, but not A, C, and Z” because you don’t want to recreate the fairy tale (Foster 62). • Instead of recreating the fairy tale, we’re trying to make use of details or patterns, portions of some prior text “to add depth and texture to your story, to bring out a theme, to lend irony to a statement, to play with readers’ deeply ingrained knowledge of fairy tales” (Foster 62). • In literature, Irony drives “a great deal of fiction and poetry, even when the work isn’t overly ironic or when the irony of subtle” (Foster 62). • But when do you see irony you ask? “Whenever fairy tales and their simplistic worldview crop up in connection with out complicated and morally ambiguous world,” you can plan on irony (Foster 62). How does this apply? • All of the information we’ve gone over applies when “you sit down to read a novel, you want character, story, (or) ideas” by having you learn and make habit of looking for glimpses of familiar outlines in the story. • However, as you read, there is one question that you should always keep in mind: “Why? Always, why?”(Foster 63). • In a story, there should always be both strangeness and familiarity but the story should be unlike anything we’ve read before. • When both of these properties are accomplished, it sets up vibrations, “harmonies…and those harmonies are where a sense of depth, solidity, resonance” comes from (Foster 63).

8. Applying to Great Expectations • In Great Expectations, our information can be used as an example by modernizing Great expectations in a modern situation. • For example, the situation of Pip going from “rags to riches” as an apprentice who helps the convict can be modernized as the life story of Eminem. Pip, who was made a gentleman by Magwitch who “put money away only for you to spend” is modernized into Eminem, who was once a poor person living in the ghetto, who was taken in by Dr. Dre and made into a famous rapper (Dickens, 340).

9. Applying to Our Everyday Life • The information described in chapter 8 of how to read literature like a professor can easily be seen in our everyday life as we read the news as see as people die out of love such as in Romeo and Juliet. For example, if you read the Houston Chronicle, you would read how a woman and a man have died after being lost in the woods with nowhere to go. This situation is a perfect example of The Gingerbread Man but it excludes the parts of the house and the crumbs. • The information also applies to our everyday life as many people may or may not subconsciously include the works of old fairy tales in their writing.

10. Works Cited • Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. New York: Bantam Dell, 1986. Print. • Foster, Thomas C. How to Read Literature Like a Professor. New York: Harper-Collins Publishers, Inc., 2003. Print