Close reading is a critical way of interpreting literature that was developed in the mid-twentieth century by a group of scholars and intellectuals known as the New Critics. While the theoretical and critical insights of the New Criticism have not been “new” for some time, the methodology of close reading that they pioneered still remains an important technique within literary studies.
What separates close reading from other critical endeavors is that it treats the text - whether it be a poem, a play, a novel, or a cereal box - as an autonomous linguistic object. By operating under the assumption that literature was autonomous, the New Critics wanted to understand the study of literature as something distinct from studying the history of literature or the sociology of literature. The literariness of the work was important for its own sake. It is no coincidence that the desire to differentiate the literary as a field of knowledge occurred at the same time that criticism was being institutionalized and professionalized in the University. This time was also a period were many Americans for the first time had access to higher education and the student population became more culturally diverse. Thus, turning to the language of the text allowed all students more or less equal footing when approaching a work of literature.
How Not to Close Read:
While there are a whole slew of critical no-no's when it comes to close reading, two errors are considered to be more egregious than others. Since literature is autonomous close reading does not concern itself with the following: 1) the author and 2) the reader
- Intentional Fallacy: New Critics held that it did not matter what the author intended because the work itself was self-sufficient. It does not matter what the author meant, because the text means something regardless of what the author's intended meaning was.
- Affective Fallacy: Similarly, because literature is self-sufficient it does not matter what literature does. Just as they ignored the intention of the author, they ignored the feeling of the reader. How literature might affectively move a reader did not matter because an interest in this got one away from the text. Thus, when you are constructing your own close readings, you should leave your own affective responses out of your explication of the text.
How to Close Read:
New Criticism is primarily a formalist school of criticism, and close reading is a formalist activity. Thus, when you are performing a close reading your job is to understand how the form of the work –the way it is arranged – mediates your understanding of the content of what is being said. In order to do a close reading you will have to understand how something is being said, as much as you understand what is being said. When performing a close reading, you should consider the following:
Structure
- In what genre is the passage written? Is it heavily or lightly marked by genre?
- How does the passage fit in with the overall genre of the work in which it occurs? (E.g., is it a humorous passage in a comedy, or a moment of comic relief in a tragedy?)
- Does the passage consist of narration, description, analysis, or discourse?
- Is discourse direct, indirect, or free indirect?
- Are there significant repetitions or redundancies?
- Does one part of the passage contradict or modify another?
- Are there significant omissions?
- Does the passage move quickly or slowly, briefly or at length?
Diction
- Connotation: why these specific words? (E.g., father, dad, daddy, pa, sire)
- Polysemy: do the words have other meanings or homonyms?
- What parts of speech (nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) predominate?
- Are the words:
common or unusual?
simple or complex?
long or short?
concrete or abstract?
particular or general?
archaic or current?
context-dependent or context-independent?
simple or complex?
long or short?
concrete or abstract?
particular or general?
archaic or current?
context-dependent or context-independent?
Syntax and Sentence Structure
- Do any sentences or clauses have an unusual word order (“California is where I went”)? (The basic word order in English is subject-verb-object.)
- Does the word order make us wait for information or provide it earlier than expected?
- Does it call particular attention to one part of the sentence?
- Does it cause an initial mistake or ambiguity that it later clears up?
- Tense: past, present, future?
- Aspect: neutral, progressive, perfect, progressive perfect?
- Mood: indicative, imperfect, conditional, subjunctive
- Valency: intransitive, transitive?
- Voice: active, passive?
Person and Number
- Are subjects first-, second-, or third-person? Singular or plural?
- Are objects singular or plural?
Tropes
- What figures of speech are used?
- Does the logic of the passage rely mainly on metaphor or metonymy
- Are comparisons made through metaphor or simile?
Why Do This?
The benefits to close reading are vast. They allow for a thorough interrogation of the text and its language. Knowing how to close read will not only help you with basic reading comprehension, but it will allow you a greater understanding of it; with close reading you will be able to penetrate beyond the surface meaning of any text. Knowing how to close read in your day to day life will allow you to see past the everyday meanings of the texts you encounter and to gain a fuller understanding of the world around you.
