Close Reading and Its Vicissitudes

Seminar: Tue/Fri 12-2 pm in Zoom Virtual Classroom

A/P Lo Mun Hou
Office: Cinnamon South Learn Lobe #02-02
Tel: 6516 4077
Email: usplomh@nus.edu.sg

Introduction

This class is about the critical method, practice, technique, or even philosophy that most often goes by the name “close reading.” The technique has arguably been the foundational tool in Anglo-American literary studies since at least the late-1940s, eventually also becoming a critical method used in, more generally, the humanities, and in disciplines such as social sciences, cultural studies, and science and technology studies. As a student in the USP, you may well have been asked to do “close readings” in Writing and Critical Thinking classes, and beyond. In this module, we will discuss what it means to “close read,” but also consider the affordances and limitations of close reading. To do this, we will track the vicissitudes—the changing fortunes, the reputational ups and downs—of close reading in the Anglo-American academy; consequently, this is mainly a class in intellectual history.

How will the module proceed?

Logically, we will begin by asking, “What is close reading?” We will try to inductively answer the question by first surveying some manifestations of the practice today, before going back to the historical moments (that make up what is called “New Criticism”) when close reading was seemingly invented. We will then examine how close reading is deployed in what we can loosely call political criticism: by studying instances of how feminist, queer, Marxist, deconstructive critics use close reading, or formalist analysis, for various ends. By looking at all these examples that either explicitly lay out the principles of close reading or implicitly put them into practice, we will, in this first half of the module, learn how to do close reading.

In the second, more meta and reflective half of the module, we will engage with several major critiques of close reading that have arisen in the past few decades. While close reading has always been scrutinized, each of these recent critiques offers concrete methodological alternatives, such as: “distant reading”; “reparative reading,” “surface reading,” “close but not deep reading,” “thin description,” and “just reading”; and “too-close reading.” Aside from assessing the merits and workability of these alternative methods, we will try, more importantly, to discern the underlying stakes of the debates. Indeed, because “close reading” is frequently treated as synonymous with or a subset of terms such as “explication,” “analysis,” “critique,” or even “critical thinking,” the class should also be understood as one that encourages you to think about this bigger question: What is the proper function, or the point, of literary analysis or analysis tout court? Should it seek to make small claims (about a literary work), or larger ones (e.g., about society, culture, history)? Is it the job of analysis to expose and uncover (thereby assuming, perhaps, that we know better than authors and are generally smarter), or to "merely" describe? Should analysis strive for objectivity, or lean into its subjective basis?

Updated: 28 July 2020

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the module, you should be able to:

  1. Articulate the meanings of close reading, and thus demonstrate an ability to close read.
  2. Evaluate the affordances and limitations of close reading.
  3. Understand various critiques of close reading; detect the stakes involved in these debates; and assess the cogency and soundness of these critiques and alternatives.
  4. Connect the scholarly arguments over close readings with larger questions about the roles and functions of analysis, critique, critical thinking.

Updated: 8 Aug 2020

Readings

The finalized readings will be listed in the syllabus. But the following should illustrate the kinds of materials that will be discussed in the module: chiefly, essays that interpret, or philosophize and theorize about, literature. However, part of the module is about challenges to traditional notions of how literature should or can be studied; thus, some of the assigned readings are about other disciplines (anthropology, science studies), or will employ methods from "non-literary" disciplines (such as sociology, social sciences, and quantification; computing and big data). Generally, each seminar will endeavour to assign 20-30 pages of readings.

Best, Stephen and Sharon Marcus. “Surface Reading: An Introduction.” Representations, vol. 108, no. 1, 2009, pp. 1-21.

Bewes, Timothy. “Reading with the Grain: A New World in Literary Criticism.” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Criticism, vol. 21 no. 5, 2010, pp. 1-33.

Brooks, Cleanth. “The Formalist Critic.” 1951. Rpt. in Twentieth Century Literary Theory: A Reader, 2nd edition, edited by K.M. Newton. MacMillan Education, 1997, pp. 26-30.

________. Excerpt from “Irony as a Principle of Structure.” 1949. Rpt. in Critical Theory Since Plato, 3rd edition, edited by Hazard Adams and Leroy Searle. Thomson and Wadsworth, 2005, pp. 1043-1045, 1048-1049.

________. Excerpt from “Irony and ‘Ironic’ Poetry.” College English, vol. 9 no. 5, 1948, pp. 231-233, 237.

________. “The Language of Paradox.” The Well-Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry. Harvest Books, 1947, pp. 3-20.

Culler, Jonathan. “The Closeness of Close Reading.” ADE Bulletin, vol. 149, 2010, pp. 20-25.

Eagleton, Terry. “Preface” and “Openings.” How to Read Literature. Yale University Press, 2013, pp. ix-x, 1-44.

Empson, William. “Contents.” Seven Types of Ambiguity. Chatto & Windus, 1949, pp. v-vi.

English, James F. and Ted Underwood. Excerpt from “Shifting Scales: Between Literature and Social Science.” Modern Language Quarterly, vol. 77, no. 3, 2016, pp. 277-289.

Ferguson, Frances. “Now It’s Personal: D. A. Miller and Too-Close Reading.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 41, no. 3, 2015, pp. 521-540.

Geertz, Clifford. “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight.” The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. Basic Books, 2000, pp. 412-453.

________. “Thick Description: Towards an Interpretative Theory of Culture.” The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. Basic Books, 2000, pp. 3-30.

Geertsema, Johan. “Close Reading as Critical Thinking.” CDTL Brief, vol. 11, no. 3, 2008, pp. 3-4.

Gilbert, Sandra and Susan Gubar. “Jane Austen’s Cover Story (and Its Secret Agents).” Close Reading: The Reader, edited by Frank Lentricchia and Andrew DuBois. Duke University Press, 2003, pp. 272-300.

Jameson, Fredric. “On Interpretation: Literature as a Socially Symbolic Act [Excerpts].” 1981. Rpt. in The Jameson Reader, edited by Michael Hardt and Kathi Weeks. Blackwell, 2000, pp. 33-60.

Jin, Jay. “Problems of Scale in ‘Close’ and “Distant’ Reading.” Philological Quarterly, vol. 96, no. 1, 2017, pp. 105-129.

Jockers, Matthew L.. “Part 1: Foundation.” Macroanalysis: Digital Methods and Literary History. University of Illinois Press, 2013, pp. 3-32.

Johnson, Barbara. “Teaching Deconstructively.” 1985. Rpt. in The Barbara Johnson Reader: The Surprise of Otherness, edited by Melissa Feuerstein, Bill Johnson González, Lili Porten, and Keja L. Valens. Duke University Press, 2014, pp. 347-356.

Latour, Bruno. “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 30, 2004, pp. 225-248.

Love, Heather. “Close Reading and Thin Description.” Public Culture, vol. 25, no. 3, 2013, pp. 401-434. 

Marcus, Sharon. Excerpt from “Just Reading: Female Friendship and the Marriage Plot.” Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England. Princeton University Press, 2007, pp. 73-76.

Miller, D. A.. “Anal Rope.” Representations, no. 32, 1990, pp. 114-133.

________. "Hitchcock's Hidden Pictures." Critical Inquiry, vol. 37, no. 1, 2010, pp. 106-130.

Moretti, Franco. “Conjectures on World Literatures.” Distant Reading. Verso, 2013, pp. 43-62.

Ruberg, Bonnie. “Getting Too Close: Portal, ‘Anal Rope,’ and the Perils of Queer Interpretation.” Video Games Have Always Been Queer. New York University Press, 2019, pp. 56-83.

Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading, Or, You’re So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Essay is About You.” Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. Duke University Press, 2003, pp. 123-152.

Smith, Barbara Herrnstein Smith. “What Was ‘Close Reading’? A Century of Method in Literary Studies.” Minnesota Review, vol. 87, 2016, pp. 57-75.

Warner, Michael. Excerpt from "Uncritical Reading." Polemic: Critical or Uncritical, edited by Jane Gallop. Routledge, 2004, pp. 13-20. 

Updated: 30 July 2020

Assessments

The finalized assessments will be detailed in the syllabus. The following information is therefore merely indicative or illustrative, and liable to be adjusted in accordance with factors such as class size.

  • There are no final exams in the module; assessments are continual.
  • To pass the module, you need to satisfactorily complete each and every CA component.
  • As sketched out in the module introduction, two major learning outcomes of the module are (a) to learn how to do close readings, and (b) to understand and assess critiques of close reading. Accordingly, the two major assignments of the module will be two academic essays:
    • The first (likely due Week 6/7) will be a close reading of a text of your choice;
    • The second (likely due Reading Week) will require you to make an evaluative and evidence-based argument about one or more of the alternatives to close reading we will encounter.
  • The other CA components will include seminar participation; more casual and lower-stakes writing (e.g., blog posts); and brief seminar presentations.

Updated: 28 July 2020

Full Syllabus (PDF)

Click here for the full syllabus

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