Thinking Small

2020 ◽  
pp. 228-242
Author(s):  
Hannah Freed-Thall
Keyword(s):  
Fiddler Crab ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Ethical Relation ◽  
Specific Strategy ◽  
Collège De France ◽  
The Look ◽  
Marine Biologist ◽  
Cultural Theorist

This chapter understands modernist close reading in an expanded sense, as an open-ended practice of attention to the look and feel of things. This practice is not exclusively directed at literary texts. Rather, it is a way of seeing that takes a wide variety of phenomena—from a poem to a fiddler crab—as lifeworlds to be read. Close reading, understood in this manner, is less a specific strategy than an ethical relation. Sensitive to variations and valances of difference, elisions and silences, the close reader cultivates patience as she learns to listen for the intermittent and the unexpected. The chapter examines two works that exemplify close reading’s imaginative possibilities: marine biologist Carson’s 1955 book, The Edge of the Sea, and literary and cultural theorist Roland Barthes’s 1977–78 seminar at the Collège de France, The Neutral.

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.

Language Pangs

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilit Ferber
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Philosophical Text ◽  
Origin Of Language ◽  
Pain Expression ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

Language and pain are usually thought of as opposites, the one being about expression and communication, the other destructive, “beyond words,” and isolating. Language Pangs challenges these familiar conceptions and offers a reconsideration of the relationship between pain and language in terms of an essential interconnectedness rather than an exclusive opposition. The book’s premise is that the experience of pain cannot be probed without consideration of its inherent relation to language, and vice versa: understanding the nature of language essentially depends on an account of its relationship with pain. Language Pangs brings together discussions of philosophical as well as literary texts, an intersection especially productive in considering the phenomenology of pain and its bearing on language. The book’s first chapter presents a phenomenology of pain and its relation to language. Chapters 2 and 3 provide a close reading of Herder’s Treatise on the Origin of Language (1772), which was the first modern philosophical text to bring together language and pain, establishing the cry of pain as the origin of language. Herder also raises important claims regarding the relationship between human and animal, sympathy, and the role of hearing in the experience of pain. Chapter 4 is devoted to Heidegger’s seminar (1939) on Herder’s text about language, a relatively unknown seminar that raises important claims regarding pain, expression, and hearing. Chapter 5 focuses on Sophocles’ story of Philoctetes, important to Herder’s treatise, in terms of pain, expression, sympathy, and hearing, also referring to more thinkers such as Cavell and Gide.

scholarly journals Fanon’s Lacan and the Traumatogenic Child: Psychoanalytic Reflections on the Dynamics of Colonialism and Racism

2015 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 77-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erica Burman
Keyword(s):  
Close Reading ◽  
Lacanian Psychoanalysis ◽  
Social Constitution ◽  
Black Skin ◽  
The Social ◽  
Lacanian Theory ◽  
The Look

This paper revisits Fanon’s relationship with psychoanalysis, specifically Lacanian psychoanalysis, via a close reading of his rhetorics of childhood – primarily as mobilized by the ‘Look, a Negro!’ scenario from Black Skin, White Masks, the traumatogenic scene which installs the black man’s sense of alienation from his own body and his inferiority. While this scene has been much discussed, the role accorded the child in this has attracted little attention. This paper focuses on the role and positioning of the child to reconsider Fanon’s ideas, in relation to his contribution to the social constitution of subjectivity, arguing that reading Fanon alongside both his citations of Lacan and some aspects of Lacanian theory opens up further interpretive possibilities in teasing out tensions in Fanon’s writing around models of subjectivity. Finally, it is argued that it is where Fanon retains an indeterminacy surrounding the child that he is most politically fruitful.

scholarly journals UDSIGELSE OG KULTURMØDER: Om sammenhængen mellem postkolonial litteratur og ansættelse af nydanskere

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heidi Bojsen
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Differences ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
Job Interview ◽  
Ahmadou Kourouma ◽  
Literary Theories ◽  
Communicative Processes

This article sets out to discuss how we may work with the notion of ‘cultural encounters’. Two examples are presented and discussed: One is drawn from the novel Monnè, outrages et défis (1990) by the prize-winning Ivorian author Ahmadou Kourouma. The other example refers to a job interview of an ethnic minority Dane in Denmark, published in a review by a Danish municipal administration (Århus Kommune) in 2003. The article brings a number of critical literary theories into dialogue in order to discuss two major points. First, the article shows how the chosen theoretical notions can help us to describe what happens in situations of communication where different, and possibly incommensurable, agents and contexts meet and interact in settings that are marked by conceptions of cultural differences. The theories used are Michel Foucault’s discursive formations, Emile Benveniste’s concept of enunciation, Mikhail Bakhtin’s reflexions of contrapuntal narratives, and Homi Bhabha’s theorisation of the anteriority of the sign as it occurs in a disjunctive temporality. Secondly, the article introduces a new interpretative method of how literary texts and critical literary theory may be used within anthropological studies. Instead of focusing on the notion of ‘identities’ and the ensuing conflicts between difference and sameness, this approach focuses on cultural articulations as dynamic communicative processes. In so doing, it situates itself within literary and anthropological theories of representation. Making a close reading of the chosen texts, the article shows that cultural encounters are never merely a question of ‘culture’. Cultural encounters become communicative scenarios where ideas, motives, intentions, and emotions are expressed, interpreted, and received by differently reacting agents.

The linguistics of reading literature

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Averintseva-Klisch
Keyword(s):  
School Engagement ◽  
School Context ◽  
Reading Strategy ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Literary Reading ◽  
Linguistic Model ◽  
Pronominal Reference ◽  
Aesthetic Reading

Abstract In this paper, I attempt a bridge between linguistics, in particular text pragmatics, and school reading of literary texts. I propose a linguistic model of these peculiarities of the reading of literary texts, especially poetry, that have been called ‘aesthetic reading’, arguing that a linguistically founded basis is what is lacking for school engagement with (not only literary) texts. In the last years there has been extensive research on the linguistics-literature interface; however, what is surprisingly still missing, is a consistent linguistic model of literary reading. In this paper, I propose such a model and show that ‘aesthetic reading’ involves a distinct reading strategy that can be captured in terms of text-world-models and the differentiation between coherence and text sense displaying. Consciously reading poetry amounts, linguistically seen, to a close reading (i) especially focusing marked expressions, i.e., deviations from phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic and textpragmatic routines, (ii) maintaining of unsolved ambiguities and thus (iii) generating an array of ‘authorized inferences’ that can be productively used for a principled plurality of interpretations. I specify this proposal and illustrate it with two cases of marked pronominal reference, arguing that my proposal has some important implications that make it particularly suitable for school context.

scholarly journals Developing soft skills with micro-fiction: a close-reading experience

2020 ◽  
pp. 51-58
Author(s):  
Ana Reimão
Keyword(s):  
Soft Skills ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Materials Development ◽  
Reading Experience ◽  
Universal Principles ◽  
Language Module

Micro-contos, or micro-fiction, are very short and concise literary texts that require close-reading and inference from the reader. In this case study, I will describe how I have used these widely available texts in a Portuguese A2/B1 language module to develop analytical and other soft skills. I will demonstrate how this activity meets Tomlinson’s (2011) universal principles for materials development in language teaching, namely, exposing learners to meaningful input highlighting linguistic features as well as enabling learners to engage affectively and cognitively in the learning experience. Finally, I will give details of how it has been received by students.

scholarly journals ETHIOPIA AND ETHIOPIANISM IN SELECTED HISTORICAL PLAYS BY TSEGAYE GEBREMEDHIN

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (10) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Haimanot Wassie ◽  
Animut Getahun
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Sampling Method ◽  
Basic Research ◽  
Major Elements ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Main Method ◽  
Research Questions

The main objective of this research was to show the representation of Ethiopia and Ethiopianism in Tsegaye Gebremedhin’s selected historical plays (Tewodros, Petros Yachin Seat and Menelik). The basic research questions focused on how the depiction and representation can be explained and to answer these questions, new historical theoretical and critical approach was used. A purposive sampling method was used to select the sample plays that offer relevant data by using some criteria. The main method of data collection focuses on a close reading of literary and non-literary texts. After reading the plays critically, the major elements of Ethiopianism and historical events are identified, analyzed and interpreted. Accordingly, patriotism, unity, hospitality and freedom and independence were identified as elements of Ethiopianism, and the passion of Abune Petros, Tewodros at Meqdela and the battle of Adwa are identified as major historical events. The analysis mainly shows that these elements of Ethiopianism and historical events are depicted in the plays positively to promote the prevalence of Ethiopianism. The plays used direct, indirect and symbolic way of expression to articulate Ethiopianism. Generally, the plays are written based on the actual historical events which possess the mentioned elements of Ethiopianism and these elements are depicted in a way that advocates the need to develop the sense of Ethiopianism than ethnicity.

scholarly journals What “A Smile of Fortune” Has To Hide: An Intertextual And Comparative Reconsideration of the Texture and Theme of Conrad’s Tale

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 7-33
Author(s):  
Grażyna Maria Teresa Branny
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Short Fiction ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Light In August ◽  
Moby Dick ◽  
Textual Evidence ◽  
Point Of Reference

The present article is part of a larger project on Conrad’s less known short fiction, the area of his writing which is largely undervalued, and even deprecated at times. The paper’s aim is to enhance the appreciation of “A Smile of Fortune,” by drawing attention to its “inner texture” as representative of Conrad’s “art of expression,” especially in view of the writer’s own belief in the supremacy of form over content as well as “suggestiveness” over “explicitness” in his fiction. To achieve this aim a New Critical (“close reading”), intertextual and comparative approaches to Conrad’s story have been adopted, involving nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literary texts, i.e., both those preceding and those following the publication of Conrad’s ’Twixt Land and Sea (1912) volume featuring the tale in question. The intertextual reading of “A Smile of Fortune” against Bernard Malamud’s short story “The Magic Barrel,” Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, and William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!, with Light in August as a point of reference, reveals the workings in Conrad’s story of the modernist device of denegation, which, alongside antithesis and oxymoron, seems to be largely responsible for the tale’s contradictions and ambiguities, which should thus be perceived as the story’s asset rather than flaw. The textual evidence of Conrad’s tale, as well as its comparison with three short stories: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and Peter Taylor’s “Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time,” seem to confirm the presence of the implications of the theme of incest in Conrad’s text, heretofore unrecognized in criticism. Overall, the foregoing analysis of “A Smile of Fortune” hopes to account for, if not disentangle, the story’s complex narratological meanderings and seemingly insoluble ambiguities, particularly as regards character and motive, naming Conrad rather than Faulkner the precursor of denegation.

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.

Coetzee’s Critique of Language

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter D. McDonald
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Philosophical Texts ◽  
Philosophical Questions ◽  
Literary Experience ◽  
The Way

The critique of language at stake in this chapter is Fritz Mauthner’s little-known Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache (1901–2), a text remembered in philosophical circles chiefly because of a brief, categorically negative aside in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922). In comparing Mauthner with Coetzee’s own critique of language, McDonald’s wider interest lies in reflecting upon the way in which scholarship often treats literary texts as the vehicles for ideas that can be unproblematically ‘compared’ with philosophical texts. What is involved, McDonald asks, in crediting the fact that literary texts are not ‘quasi-philosophical essays in disguise’? His answer draws on further questions of literary history and the practice of close reading, and examines the faultlines between philosophical questions and literary experience. In particular, through a reading of Disgrace he suggests that the formal workings of literary texts have the potential to unsettle the very salience of the philosophical questions being posed.

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