14. We read without paying attention, pending a thousand things. Often we are left with the argument and we leave aside the form, the way that argument is explained, which is what, Foster maintains, confers on a text its literary character, its nature of rhetorical creation. Foster propositions of a series of guidelines with which to deal in a more sophisticated and mature way the reading of a text, most of which are related to the use of symbolic meaning. Things do not occur in narratives by chance recurrences have to be studied, because they usually hide meanings. In this manual Foster teaches that the key is to know the basic tools of literary criticism, to focus on the tone, rhythm, texture, symbolism, allusions, irony, and other formal
