How to Read Literature Like a Professor Terms

Invented by the Russian scholar Mikhail Bakhtin, intertextuality simply refers to the relationship between different literary works. It might help to think of all texts as existing in a giant network or web, with inherent… read analysis of Intertextuality

The word archetype means the original type from which other copies are produced. It has different meanings within different contexts—for example, psychology or philosophy—but in literary analysis it refers to the shared understanding of certain… read analysis of Archetype

The canon refers to a list of texts though to be essential to a given literary tradition. One can refer to the English canon or the Western canon, and indeed, in a Western context if… read analysis of Canon

A conceit is an extended metaphor that is used to structure a text. The example Foster cites is John Donne’s “The Flea,” a poem structured around the flea-as-metaphor for sexuality. It might be difficult to… read analysis of Conceit