How to Read Literature Like a Professor

Review

A delight to read, and a reminder of why I love reading so much. Foster meanders through a world of literature to illuminate the symbols, patterns, and archetypes that give depth and texture to the stories we read. I especially liked his emphasis on intertextuality: how every work is part of the body of literature, and is therefore in conversation with the works that came before and after it through our collective cultural memory. This book was exactly what I'd hoped it would be, and I'm excited to encounter my next novels with new eyes.

The more we become aware of the possibility that our text is speaking to other texts, the more similarities and correspondences we begin to notice, and the more alive the text becomes.