Class Blog

The purpose of this blog is to assist you in the analysis of your fall semester reading assignment for English II Honors. As you are reading and annotating  How to Read Literature Like a Professor  by Thomas C. Foster, you will be required to post your study guide responses for each chapter for a minimum of 27 posts. Additionally, you should try to avoid repeating your classmate's examples; therefore, those who wait to complete the blog assignment will have a more difficult time trying to find creative and original examples. If you do utilize the same example, you must expand and look at the work in a different perspective. Finally, you will need to respond to at least two other individuals' posts. Aim for 100-200 words per response for each post, depending on the type of question you are asked to answer. Focus on facts and specific details in the novel/movie rather than making judgments or summarizing. Pay attention to the movies/TV shows you are watching and think a

In Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Red-Headed League,” Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson both observe Jabez Wilson carefully, yet their differing interpretations of the same details reveal the difference between a “Good Reader” and a “Bad Reader.” Watson can only describe what he sees; Holmes has the knowledge to interpret what he sees, to draw conclusions, and to solve the mystery. Understanding literature need no longer be a mystery -- Thomas Foster’s book will help transform you from a naive, sometimes confused Watson to an insightful, literary Holmes. Professors and other informed readers see symbols, archetypes, and patterns because those things are there -- if you have learned to look for them. As Foster says, you learn to recognize the literary conventions the “same way you get to Carnegie Hall. Practice.” (xiv). Note to students:  These short writing assignments will let you practice your literary analysis and   they will help me get to know you and your literary tastes. W

How do memory, symbol, and pattern affect the reading of literature?  How does the recognition of patterns make it easier to read complicated literature?  Discuss a time when your appreciation of a literary work was enhanced by understanding symbol or pattern.

List the five aspects of the QUEST and then apply them to something you have read (or viewed) in the same format used on pages 3-5.

Choose a meal from a literary work and apply the ideas of Chapter 2 to this literary depiction.

What are the essentials of the Vampire story? Apply this to a literary work you have read or viewed.

Select a sonnet and show which form it is. Discuss how the content reflects the form. Add the sonnet to the top of your entry.

Define intertextuality. Discuss three examples that have helped you in reading specific works.

Discuss a work that you are familiar with that alludes to or reflects Shakespeare.  Show how the author uses this connection thematically.  Read pages 44-46 carefully.  In these pages, Foster shows how Fugard reflects Shakespeare through both plot and theme.  In your discussion, focus on theme (a message, not a word).

Read “Araby” ( here ). Discuss Biblical allusions that Foster does not mention.  Look at the example of the “two great jars.” Be creative and imaginative in these connections.

Think of a work of literature that reflects a fairy tale. Discuss the parallels. Does it create irony or deepen appreciation?

Explain two commercials/advertisements derived or inspired by characters or situations from Greek mythology. OR  Write a free verse poem derived or inspired by characters or situations from Greek mythology. Be prepared to share your poem with the class. (Refer to your 9th grade mythology notes to jog your memory.)

Discuss the importance of weather in a specific literary work, not in terms of plot.

What did you think of this chapter?

Present examples of the two kinds of violence found in literature. Show how the effects are different.

Use the process described on page 106 and investigate the symbolism of the fence in “Araby.” (Mangan’s sister stands behind it.) “Araby” can be found on this blog .

Assume that Foster is right and “it is all political.”  Use his criteria to show that one of the major works you have read in high school is political.

Apply the criteria on page 119 to a major character in a significant literary work.  Try to choose a character that will have many matches.  This is a particularly apt tool for analyzing film -- for example, Star Wars, Cool Hand Luke, Excalibur, Malcolm X, Braveheart, Spartacus, Gladiator and Ben-Hur .

Select a literary work in which flight signifies escape or freedom. Explain in detail.

OK ...the sex chapters. The key idea from this chapter is that “scenes in which sex is coded rather than explicit can work at multiple levels and sometimes be more intense that literal depictions” (141).  In other words, sex is often suggested with much more art and effort than it is described, and, if the author is doing his job, it reflects and creates theme or character. 

Think of a “baptism scene” from a significant literary work. How was the character different after the experience? Discuss.

Discuss at least two different aspects of a specific literary work that Foster would classify under “geography.”

Find a poem that mentions a specific season.  Then discuss how the poet uses the season in a meaningful, traditional, or unusual way. (Link a copy of the poem with your analysis.)

Write your own definition for archetype.  Then identify an archetypal story and apply it to a literary work with which you are familiar.

Figure out Harry Potter’s scar. If you aren’t familiar with Harry Potter, select another character with a physical imperfection and analyze its implications for characterization.

Recall two characters who died of a disease in a literary work.  Consider how these deaths reflect the “principles governing the use of disease in literature” (215-217).  Discuss the effectiveness of the death as related to plot, theme, or symbolism.

After reading Chapter 25, choose a scene or episode from a novel, play or epic written before the twentieth century.  Contrast how it could be viewed by a reader from the twenty-first century with how it might be viewed by a contemporary reader.  Focus on specific assumptions that the author makes, assumptions that would not make it in this century.

Select an ironic literary work and explain the multi-vocal nature of the irony in the work.

Read “The Garden Party” by Katherine Mansfield, the short story starting on page 245. Complete the exercise on pages 265-266, following the directions exactly.  Then compare your writing with the three examples. How did you do? What does the essay that follows comparing Laura with Persephone add to your appreciation of Mansfield’s story?

Choose a motif not discussed in this book (as the horse reference on page 280) and note its appearance in one or two different works. What does this idea seem to signify?

Araby by James Joyce North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers' School set the boys free. An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbours in a square ground. The other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces. The former tenant of our house, a priest, had died in the back drawing-room. Air, musty from having been long enclosed, hung in all the rooms, and the waste room behind the kitchen was littered with old useless papers. Among these I found a few paper-covered books, the pages of which were curled and damp: The Abbot, by Walter Scott, The Devout Communicant, and The Memoirs of Vidocq. I liked the last best because its leaves were yellow. The wild garden behind the house contained a central apple-tree and a few straggling bushes, under one of which I found the late tenant's rust