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How to Read Literature Like a Professor . Introduction: How’d He Do That?. Stories and novels have a very large set of conventions. 1. Types of characters 2. Plot rhythms 3. Chapter structures 4. Point-of –View limitations Poems employ 1. form 2. structure 3. rhythm
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How to Read Literature Like a Professor Introduction: How’d He Do That?
Stories and novels have a very large set of conventions. 1. Types of characters 2. Plot rhythms 3. Chapter structures 4. Point-of –View limitations • Poems employ 1. form 2. structure 3. rhythm 4. rhyme Recognizing these conventions requires PRACTICE.
Readers respond first on an emotional level. • English scholars accept the affective response level of the story, but focus attention on other elements. Where did the effect come from? Whom does this character resemble? Where have I seen this situation before?
Memory, Symbol, Pattern • While reading, professors look for correspondences and corollaries. • Professors also read, and think symbolically. Everything is a symbol of something, it seems, until proven otherwise. Is this a metaphor? Is that an analogy? • Pattern recognition: Requires the ability to distance one’s self from the story, to look beyond the purely affective level of plot, drama and characters and recognize patterns within the literature.
