How to Read Literature Like a Professor Revised: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines

by Thomas C. Foster

As a practical matter, then, we readers can play this two ways. If heart trouble shows up in a novel or play, we start looking for its signification, and we usually don’t have to hunt too hard. The other way around: if we see that characters have difficulties of the heart, we won’t be too surprised when emotional trouble becomes the physical ailment and the cardiac episode appears.

But I’ll tell you what I think, and what I try to do. It seems to me that if we want to get the most out of our reading, as far as is reasonable, we have to try to take the works as they were intended to be taken. The formula I generally offer is this: don’t read with your eyes.

Let’s be clear, just so no one runs off the rails: these implications are invariably secondary. The primary meaning of the text is the story it is telling, the surface discussion (landscape description, action, argument, and so on).

every work teaches us how to read it as we go along. The big lessons, for best results, occur early on. Context helps a lot in reading new or unfamiliar forms of literature. Page three helps with page four, which helps with pages eight and fifteen, and so on. Not every book presents the same level of challenge;

That’s irony—take our expectations and upend them, make them work against us.

What irony chiefly involves, then, is a deflection from expectation.

So there’s our second ironic precept: irony doesn’t work for everyone. Because of the multivocal nature of irony—we hear those multiple voices simultaneously—readers who are inclined toward univocal utterances simply may not register that multiplicity.

We must remember: irony trumps everything. In other words, every chapter in this book goes out the window when irony comes in the door.

Be intelligent, be bold, be assertive, be self-confident in your reading. It is your opinion (but not “just”) and you might be wrong, although that’s less likely than most students think. So here’s my final piece of advice: Own the books you read.

Don’t cede control of your opinions to critics, teachers, famous writers, or know-it-all professors. Listen to them, but read confidently and assertively, and don’t be ashamed or apologetic about your reading. You and I both know you’re capable and intelligent, so don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Trust the text and trust your instincts. You’ll rarely go far wrong.