First Blog Prompt (Reading Literature is a Highly Intellectual Activity)


Right after reading the first few chapters of this book, I made a comparison of this author’s values and techniques when he reads to something that is important and more familiar to me: Music theory. With music in general, in the genre “pop” there are songs that are similar to one another that all sound good, and the average person does not know much more beyond the fact that it sounds good because it just sounds good to them. This can be compared to the way that less inexperienced readers who are used to reading for purely “affective” reading in that they are used to reading things with the view that each new story is completely new, and with little to no connection to other texts than the few times a reader can recognize a story as maybe being similar to other readings. In terms of the “language of reading” and the “grammar of literature”, he refers to these things as the ways in which an upper level reader, like a professor, reads, linking this terms to what he believes to be the true value of being an upper-level reader. This is related to how he believes, and proves, that all readings are interconnected, or how they are related to a bigger picture relating to things like instincts and life, extremely well-known stories, and different cultures and religions. One of the most prevalent examples is in chapter six when Foster talks about how there are so many common themes within stories that all relate back to the Bible, writing in the beginning of the chapter, “Connect these dots: garden, serpent, plagues, flood, parting of waters, loaves, fishes, forty days, betrayal, denial, slavery and escape, fatted calves, milk and honey. Ever read a book with all these things in them?” (Foster 42).

Lauren Young

Comments

  1. Mrs. MacJune 28, 2017 at 6:04 AM

    Hi Lauren,
    I think the archetypal theory can play out in music too. I don't know if you're familiar with the group "Axis of Awesome." They are a comedic music group. They have lots of youtube videos where they claim and then show how most popular songs are made up of the exact same four chords. Very interesting. Things just seem to link us, reverberate within us. Fascinating. And it works with stories, myth, religion, etc. etc.
    Mrs. Mac

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  2. UnknownJuly 3, 2017 at 8:57 PM

    Your comparison of music and the author’s values was really interesting and unique. I never thought about the connection between music sounding the same and similarities in books. There are a lot more connections to everyday life and literature than we realize. When people do not read a lot every book seems so unique but like the author says authors write based off what they’ve seen other writers write. The more people read the more connections they make, realizing that books like the Bible and Harry Potter have many similarities. I really enjoyed the message you were giving in your blog.

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  3. UnknownJuly 9, 2017 at 1:00 PM

    I agree with your comparison to music, I actually thought of the same thing as I was reading. Many songs sound the same and many books are alike as well. The only way a person can pick up on these similarities is if they read a lot. It is kind of funny because to them the book could be totally original when it actually just be another version of a different book.

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  4. UnknownJuly 29, 2017 at 11:23 AM

    My uncle is a musician, and he used to talk about how music cycles over a period of time. Patterns popular in one time will one day be popular again in music. The same is true in fashion and art if you pay close attention. It is because we romanticize the past and therefore love to draw inspiration from it. That is what is done in literature and why thetr is such a rich and vibrant "language of reading" and "grammar of literature". Humans loving the past is a beautiful thinf because it gived every category of art a deeper sense of meaning.

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