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How to Read Novels Like a Professor: A Jaunty Exploration of the World's Favorite Literary Form

by Thomas C. Foster

A guide to the building blocks of novelistic meaning

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Paperback New English

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AlbakiReads Editorial

A guide to the building blocks of novelistic meaning

Thomas C. Foster examines the novel as a form shaped by both long tradition and continual change. Using works ranging from Don Quixote and Jane Austen to Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and contemporary writers as reference points, he focuses on the formal decisions that organize a novel: point of view, narrative voice, openings, chapters, recurring character emblems, and continuity or disruption in the narrative. Framed as a companion to How to Read Literature Like a Professor, the book offers vocabulary and interpretive tools for noticing how these choices contribute to meaning across different kinds of fiction.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Readers who want practical tools for analyzing novels
  • Fans of literary criticism centered on form and craft
  • Book-club participants and students discussing classic or contemporary fiction

Themes

Novel structurePoint of view and narrative voiceOpenings and chapter designLiterary interpretationThe evolution of the novel

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

The follow-up and companion volume to the New York Times bestselling How to Read Literature Like a Professor--a lively and entertaining guide to understanding and dissecting novels to make everyday reading more enriching, satisfying, and fun

Of all the literary forms, the novel is arguably the most discussed . . . and fretted over. From Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote to the works of Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and today's masters, the novel has grown with and adapted to changing societies and technologies, mixing tradition and innovation in every age throughout history.

Thomas C. Foster--the sage and scholar who ingeniously led readers through the fascinating symbolic codes of great literature in his first book, How to Read Literature Like a Professor--now examines the grammar of the popular novel. Exploring how authors' choices about structure--point of view, narrative voice, first page, chapter construction, character emblems, and narrative (dis)continuity--create meaning and a special literary language, How to Read Novels Like a Professor shares the keys to this language with readers who want to get more insight, more understanding, and more pleasure from their reading.

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