On Close Reading

Description

John Guillory considers close reading within the larger history of reading and writing as cultural techniques. At a time of debate about the future of “English” as a discipline and the fundamental methods of literary study, few terms appear more frequently than “close reading,” now widely regarded as the core practice of literary study. But what exactly is close reading, and where did it come from? Here John Guillory, author of the acclaimed Professing Criticism , takes up two puzzles. First, why did the New Critics—who supposedly made close reading central to literary study—so seldom use the term? And second, why have scholars not been better able to define close reading? For Guillory, these puzzles are intertwined. The literary critics of the interwar period, he argues, weren’t aiming to devise a method of reading at all. These critics were most urgently concerned with establishing the judgment of literature on more rigorous grounds than previously obtained in criticism. Guillory understands close reading as a technique, a particular kind of methodical procedure that can be described but not prescribed, and that is transmitted largely by demonstration and imitation. Guillory’s short book will be essential reading for all college teachers of literature. An annotated bibliography, curated by Scott Newstok, provides a guide to key documents in the history of close reading along with valuable suggestions for further research. Review: A gem of a book - From the classical commentary tradition to the contemporary Common Core, Guillory brings into relief what’s at stake in “close reading” — the most enduring, yet also most contested practice in literary study across the past century. The amount of learning that he consolidates in short space can be staggering; some of his footnotes alone would be fodder for an entire book’s worth of insights by another scholar. As Guillory compellingly argues, close reading entails “showing the work of reading”; it’s an art, a craft, a technique, best learned (like all human practices) through “demonstrative modeling.” Review: Not Close Enough - Guillory does not wear his learning lightly. This article, expanded into a book and padded with an extensive and awkward bibliography, is really a footnote (with its own footnotes) to the professor's Professing Criticism. Guillory continues to make the point that the practice and objects of reading have expanded and shifted drastically. His lasting point is that close reading is a "techne" or method and a rather minimal one at that. This is a truism. Almost all great critics engage in some form of close reading, be they Marxist, feminist, post-structuralist, or Aristotelean. To me, the most conspicuous absence is Samuel Johnson. Johnson's landmark Lives of the Poets is a masterclass of quotation and close reading. Look again at Aristotle's poetics and you will see a lot of pragmatic criticism that anchors itself to quotations. On a side note, his abstruse style is a prime example of how academic writers have abandoned the educated common reader. Guillory is interested in the broader audience of readers, but he certainly doesn't write for them.