Close Reading

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Byron
Keyword(s):  
Canon Law ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Literary Scholarship ◽  
English Departments ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Four Books

Close reading describes a set of procedures and methods that distinguishes the scholarly apprehension of textual material from the more prosaic reading practices of everyday life. Its origins and ancestry are rooted in the exegetical traditions of sacred texts (principally from the Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist, Christian, Zoroastrian, and Islamic traditions) as well as the philological strategies applied to classical works such as the Homeric epics in the Greco-Roman tradition, or the Chinese 詩經 (Shijing) or Classic of Poetry. Cognate traditions of exegesis and commentary formed around Roman law and the canon law of the Christian Church, and they also find expression in the long tradition of Chinese historical commentaries and exegeses on the Five Classics and Four Books. As these practices developed in the West, they were adapted to medieval and early modern literary texts from which the early manifestations of modern secular literary analysis came into being in European and American universities. Close reading comprises the methodologies at the center of literary scholarship as it developed in the modern academy over the past one hundred years or so, and has come to define a central set of practices that dominated scholarly work in English departments until the turn to literary and critical theory in the late 1960s. This article provides an overview of these dominant forms of close reading in the modern Western academy. The focus rests upon close reading practices and their codification in English departments, although reference is made to non-Western reading practices and philological traditions, as well as to significant nonanglophone alternatives to the common understanding of literary close reading.

Coda

2021 ◽  
pp. 183-188
Author(s):  
Arden Hegele
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Medical Sciences ◽  
Health Humanities ◽  
Literary Scholarship ◽  
History Of ◽  
Free Indirect Style ◽  
The Relationship

The coda extends the relationship between nineteenth-century techniques of medico-literary exegesis to reading practices in the present day. The four mobile protocols discussed in the book—dissective reading, the postmortem, free indirect style, and semiological diagnostics—offer a new portrait of the cultural interchange between Romantic literary and medical fields. They also set the stage for contemporary reading practices, especially symptomatic reading. The coda argues that the much-maligned practice of symptomatic reading might be rehabilitated through a reconsideration of the history of its origins in Romantic protocols of diagnosis, which anticipate present-day debates in literary analysis about the ethics of critique. In dialogue with the medical and health humanities, the coda offers an optimistic reconsideration of symptomatic reading as a rich, transhistorical instance of how literary scholarship might draw on and inform the medical sciences.

Readers’ Mindreading Challenges, and how They Can Inform Cognitive Science

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 188-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max van Duijn
Keyword(s):  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Cognitive Tasks ◽  
Test Cases ◽  
Cognitive Level ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
Literary Scholarship ◽  
Psychological Models ◽  
Is Theory ◽  
Narrative Spaces

What does dealing with fictional stories involve at a cognitive level? A capacity that has received ample attention in this context, both from psychologists and literary scholars, is “theory of mind” or “mindreading.” A dominant tradition in cognitive literary scholarship, mostly associated with Lisa Zunshine's work, puts particular emphasis on the importance of “recursive mindreading” or “multiple-order intentionality” (A thinks that B believes that C wants …). The current paper first discusses the key claims of this tradition, using passages from Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway as illustrations. Next, textual analyses are offered of three excerpts from more recent literary texts; two by Haruki Murakami, one by Dave Eggers. Discussing these examples reveals various merits of applying recursively embedded mindstates in a framework for literary analysis, but also shows how it is problematic. While some interesting insights into structural properties of a text can be gained, it is argued that recursive mindreading falls short as a model for the cognitive tasks readers of a text have to complete. An alternative framework, based on narrative spaces/blending theory, is suggested and discussed. Overall, the article shows how literary analysis cannot only benefit from the application of ideas from the cognitive sciences, but also the other way around: narrative excerpts can provide detailed “test cases” for psychological models and theories, thereby casting light on their strengths and weaknesses in ways research within traditional paradigms cannot do.

Outlaws and Misfits: The Identities of Modernist Criticism

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-356
Author(s):  
Ben Knights
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Industrial Capitalism ◽  
Emotional Maturity ◽  
English Departments ◽  
Emotional Autonomy ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Implicit Identity ◽  
The University ◽  
Cultural Positioning

The images of the writer as exile and outlaw were central to modernism's cultural positioning. As the Scrutiny circle's ‘literary criticism’ became the dominant way of reading in the University English departments and then in the grammar-schools, it took over these outsider images as models for the apprentice-critic. English pedagogy offered students not only an approach to texts, but an implicit identity and affective stance, which combined alert resistance to the pervasive effects of mechanised society with a rhetoric of emotional ‘maturity’, belied by a chilly judgementalism and gender anxiety. In exchanges over the close reading of intransigent, difficult texts, criticism's seminars sought a stimulus to develop the emotional autonomy of its participants against the ‘stock response’ promulgated by industrial capitalism. But refusal to reflect on its own method meant such pedagogy remained unconscious of the imitative pressures that its own reading was placing on its participants.

Alma Mater Studiorum. O genezie i początkach uniwersytetów

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 9-22
Author(s):  
Marek Maciejewski
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Institutions Of Higher Education ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
New Era ◽  
Conducting Research ◽  
The 19Th Century

The origin of universities reaches the period of Ancient Greece when philosophy (sophists, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, stoics and others) – the “Queen of sciences”, and the first institutions of higher education (among others, Plato’s Academy, Cassiodorus’ Vivarium, gymnasia) came into existence. Even before the new era, schools having the nature of universities existed also beyond European borders, including those in China and India. In the early Middle Ages, those types of schools functioned in Northern Africa and in the Near East (Baghdad, Cairo, Constantinople, cities of Southern Spain). The first university in the full meaning of the word was founded at the end of the 11th century in Bologna. It was based on a two-tiered education cycle. Following its creation, soon new universities – at first – in Italy, then (in the 12th and 13th century) in other European cities – were established. The author of the article describes their modes of operation, the methods of conducting research and organizing students’ education, the existing student traditions and customs. From the very beginning of the universities’ existence the study of law was part of their curricula, based primarily on the teaching of Roman law and – with time – the canon law. The rise of universities can be dated from the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modernity. In the 17th and 18th century they underwent a crisis which was successfully overcome at the end of the 19th century and throughout the following one.

Purity, Community, and Ritual in Early Christian Literature

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moshe Blidstein
Keyword(s):  
Third Century ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Christian Culture ◽  
Christian Literature ◽  
Christian Practices ◽  
Dietary Laws ◽  
New Religion

This book examines the meanings of purification practices and purity concepts in early Christian culture, as articulated and formed by Greek Christian authors of the first three centuries, from Paul to Origen. Concepts of purity and defilement were pivotal for understanding human nature, sin, history, and ritual in early Christianity. In parallel, major Christian practices, such as baptism, abstinence from food or sexual activity, were all understood, felt, and shaped as instances of purification. Two broad motivations, at some tension with each other, formed the basis of Christian purity discourse. The first was substantive: the creation and maintenance of anthropologies and ritual theories coherent with the theological principles of the new religion. The second was polemic: construction of Christian identity by laying claim to true purity while marking purity practices and beliefs of others (Jews, pagans, or “heretics”) as false. The book traces the interplay of these factors through a close reading of second- and third-century Christian Greek authors discussing dietary laws, death defilement, sexuality, and baptism, on the background of Greco-Roman and Jewish purity discourses. There are three central arguments. First, purity and defilement were central concepts for understanding Christian cultures of the second and third centuries. Second, Christianities developed their own conceptions and practices of purity and purification, distinct from those of contemporary and earlier Jewish and pagan cultures, though decisively influenced by them. Third, concepts and practices of purity and defilement were shifting and contentious, an arena for boundary-marking between Christians and others and between different Christian groups.

scholarly journals A critical investigation of Y7 students’ perceptions of Roman slavery as evidenced in the stories of the Cambridge Latin Course

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (42) ◽  
pp. 43-54
Author(s):  
Ella Parodi
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
English Language ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Public High School ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Sensitive Topics ◽  
Roman Culture ◽  
Introductory Textbooks

In an article, ‘The Slaves were Happy’: High School Latin and the Horrors of Classical Studies, Erik Robinson, a Latin teacher from a public high school in Texas, criticises how, in his experience, Classics teaching tends to avoid in-depth discussions on issues such as the brutality of war, the treatment of women and the experience of slaves (Robinson, 2017). However, texts such as the article ‘Teaching Sensitive Topics in the Secondary Classics Classroom’ (Hunt, 2016), and the book ‘From abortion to pederasty: addressing difficult topics in the Classics classroom’ (Sorkin Rabinowitz & McHardy, 2014) strongly advocate for teachers to address these difficult and sensitive topics. They argue that the historical distance between us and Greco-Roman culture and history can allow students to engage and participate in discussions that may otherwise be difficult and can provide a valuable opportunity to address uncomfortable topics in the classroom. Thus, Robinson's assertion that Classics teaching avoids these sensitive topics may not be so definitive. Regardless, Robinson claims that honest confrontations in the classroom with the ‘legacy of horror and abuse’ from the ancient world can be significantly complicated by many introductory textbooks used in Latin classes, such as the Cambridge Latin Course (CLC), one of the most widely used high school Latin textbooks in use in both America and the United Kingdom (Robinson, 2017). In particular, Robinson views the presentation of slavery within the CLC as ‘rather jocular and trivialising’ which can then hinder a reader's perspective on the realities of the violent and abusive nature of the Roman slave trade (Robinson, 2017). As far as he was concerned, the problem lay with the characterisation of the CLC's slave characters Grumio and Clemens, who, he argued, were presented there as happy beings and seemingly unfazed by their positions as slaves. There was never any hint in the book that Grumio or Clemens were unhappy with their lives or their positions as slaves, even though, as the CLC itself states in its English background section on Roman slavery, Roman law ‘did not regard slaves as human beings, but as things that could be bought or sold, treated well or badly, according to the whim of their master’ (CLC I, 1998, p. 78). One might argue, therefore, that there seems to be a disconnect between the English language information we learn about the brutality of the Roman slave trade provided in the background section of Stage 6, and what we can infer about Roman slavery from the Latin language stories involving our two ‘happy’ slaves.

Greek History

2014 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-129
Author(s):  
Kostas Vlassopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Real Life ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Structuralist Approach ◽  
Greek History ◽  
Four Books ◽  
Popular Subject

The interaction between Greeks and non-Greeks is an increasingly popular subject among Greek historians, as shown by four important books reviewed here: their significance lies in the various challenges that they pose to the still dominant structuralist approach, which focuses on polarity and alterity and privileges certain discourses in literary texts over the diversity encountered when one examines the totality of the evidence. All four books put at the centre of their attention the significance and consequences of real-life encounters and interactions between people of different cultural and ethnic backgrounds.

scholarly journals The Musicality of 140: Tempo, Rhythm and Structure

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jordan Browne
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Traditional Music ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Interactive Nature ◽  
Spatio Temporal

This paper explores relationships between video games and music through a close reading of the minimalistic platform game 140 (Carlsen, 2014). Of particular interest to this investigation are concepts of tempo, rhythm and structure, and how these ideas can be extended to discuss the immediate case study as well as video games as a medium. Most importantly, this analysis is concerned primarily with these elements in a performative, spatio-temporal sense as opposed to an expression of sonic qualities. Comparisons between video games and other forms of media, while certainly valuable, can become problematic as the interactive nature of games is inherently unique. While cinema or literary texts can be seen as interactive, it is the explicit nature of the interactivity that games manifest which sets them apart from other disciplines. It is in this sense, that commonality can be found between games and music through the act of play. 140 facilitates a unique dialogue on this topic as it is a game that is intensely musical while also functioning outside of some of the precincts of traditional music games, providing a distinctive lens for analysis without being distracted by its own aesthetics. Evidence of this can be seen in the game’s design, aesthetics, mechanics and spatiality—a game where the player becomes part of a greater performance, enacting the musicality of space through play.

scholarly journals IDENTITAS DIASPORIS TIGA GENERASI PEREMPUAN CINA DALAM ONLY A GIRL KARYA LIAN GOUW (Diasporic Identity of Three Generations of Chinese Females in Only A Girl Written by Lian Gouw)

ATAVISME ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-31
Author(s):  
Ratna Asmarani
Keyword(s):  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Great Role ◽  
Two Cultures ◽  
Three Generations ◽  
Library Research ◽  
Diasporic Identity ◽  
The Social ◽  
Family House

Identity is crucial in a person’s life. Diasporic identity is much more complicated because it involves at least two cultures. The focus of this paper is to analyze the diasporic identity of three generations of diasporic Chinese females as represented in Lian Gouw’s novel entitled Only a Girl. The data and supporting concepts are compiled using library research and close reading. The qualitative analysis is used to support the contextual literary analysis combining the intrinsic aspect focusing on the female characters and the extrinsic aspects concerning diaspora and identity. The results shows that each Chinese female character has tried to construct her own diasporic identity. However, the social, cultural, political, educational, and economic contexts play a great role in the struggles to construct the diasporic identity. It can be concluded that the younger the generation, the braver their effort to construct their diasporic identity and the braver their decision to take a distance with the big family house eventhough they have to face stronger and more complicated conflicts to realize and actualize their personal construction of diasporic identity.

scholarly journals “A picture book” and its educational potential

2020 ◽  
pp. 96-107
Author(s):  
E.S. Romanicheva
Keyword(s):  
Learning Process ◽  
Picture Book ◽  
Educational Process ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Teaching Literature ◽  
New Techniques ◽  
Professional Discourse ◽  
Educational Potential ◽  
Creative Tasks

The author has aimed at unleashing the educational potential of contemporary children’s and adolescent books and the possibilities of working with them in the class setting. The books (the ones mentioned in the research body are included in the first part of the bibliography) are inherently texts of a new nature, they suggest markedly different practices of working with them which allow to synthesize their verbal and visual components while reading them. For this very reason work with them should be included in the educational process – because while working like that a student will master close reading techniques, ways of checking one’s own understanding and will also fulfill creative tasks. Describing and analyzing the selected books, the author demonstrates which reading practices (reading with pauses, synthesizing a continuous and discontinuous text while reading, creative tasks based on the texts and others) are offered by the designer on the pages of the books and claims that mastering publishers’ strategies, if it becomes a professional goal, will considerably enlarge teachers’ methodological instrumentarium, will allow teachers to master new techniques of working with a multicode text and to include the former into the learning process. In the course of the research the author introduces and explains concepts that are new for the national methodology of teaching literature: text of a new nature, architecture of a book – and justifies the need for using them in the professional discourse. Generally, the article demonstrates the need for engaging ‘picture books’ at the lessons of literature as long as dealing with them will broaden the reading circle of a contemporary student and will prepare them for further independent reading of various texts and books.

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