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The Rise and Rise of Close Reading

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On Close Reading
This chapter is in the book On Close Reading
THE RISE AND RISE OF CLOSE READING The term "close reading," which for decades was largely ab-sent from literary theory, has reemerged in recent years as the subject of wide discussion. Why has close reading returned to the forefront of criticism?1 Why does it name an antagonist to be vanquished again, after what seemed to be its perma-nent demotion in the era of New Historicism? Conversely, why has close reading attracted so many efforts of late to re-affirm its importance in literary criticism, even as the core practice of the discipline? In either case, the notion of close reading is clearly unfinished business for literary study.2 1. Throughout this book, I use quotation marks to refer to "close reading" as a term, omitting the quotation marks when I refer to the practice. 2. The scholarship on close reading is too voluminous to permit more than a sampling in these notes. The resurgence of interest in close reading began in the later 1990s and continues into the present, sometimes, though not always, in response to the emergence of "distant reading." For an early statement, see Douglas Mao, "The New Critics and the Text Object;' ELH 61.1 (Spring 1996): 227-254. Scholarship attesting to a shift in the valuation of close reading in-cludes: Close Reading: The Reader, ed. Andrew DuBois and Frank Lentric-chia (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003); Isobel Armstrong, "Textual Harassment: The Ideology of Close Reading, or How Close Is Close?;• in The Radical Aesthetic (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 85-107;Jane Gallop, "The Histori-cization of Literary Studies and the Fate of Close Reading;' Profession (2007): 181-186;Jonathan Culler, "The Closeness of Close Reading," ADE Bulletin 149 (2010 ): 20-25; Jane Gallop, "Close Reading in 2009," ADE Bulletin 149 (2010 ): 15-19; John Guillory, "Close Reading: Prologue and Epilogue," ADE Bulletin 149 (2010): 8-14; N. Katherine Hayles, "How We Read: Close, Hyper, Machine," ADE Bulletin 150 (2010): 62-79; Rereading the New Criticism, ed. Miranda B. Hickman and John D. McIntyre (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2012); Helen Thaventhiran, Radical Empiricists: Five Modernist Close Readers
© 2025 University of Chicago Press

THE RISE AND RISE OF CLOSE READING The term "close reading," which for decades was largely ab-sent from literary theory, has reemerged in recent years as the subject of wide discussion. Why has close reading returned to the forefront of criticism?1 Why does it name an antagonist to be vanquished again, after what seemed to be its perma-nent demotion in the era of New Historicism? Conversely, why has close reading attracted so many efforts of late to re-affirm its importance in literary criticism, even as the core practice of the discipline? In either case, the notion of close reading is clearly unfinished business for literary study.2 1. Throughout this book, I use quotation marks to refer to "close reading" as a term, omitting the quotation marks when I refer to the practice. 2. The scholarship on close reading is too voluminous to permit more than a sampling in these notes. The resurgence of interest in close reading began in the later 1990s and continues into the present, sometimes, though not always, in response to the emergence of "distant reading." For an early statement, see Douglas Mao, "The New Critics and the Text Object;' ELH 61.1 (Spring 1996): 227-254. Scholarship attesting to a shift in the valuation of close reading in-cludes: Close Reading: The Reader, ed. Andrew DuBois and Frank Lentric-chia (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003); Isobel Armstrong, "Textual Harassment: The Ideology of Close Reading, or How Close Is Close?;• in The Radical Aesthetic (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 85-107;Jane Gallop, "The Histori-cization of Literary Studies and the Fate of Close Reading;' Profession (2007): 181-186;Jonathan Culler, "The Closeness of Close Reading," ADE Bulletin 149 (2010 ): 20-25; Jane Gallop, "Close Reading in 2009," ADE Bulletin 149 (2010 ): 15-19; John Guillory, "Close Reading: Prologue and Epilogue," ADE Bulletin 149 (2010): 8-14; N. Katherine Hayles, "How We Read: Close, Hyper, Machine," ADE Bulletin 150 (2010): 62-79; Rereading the New Criticism, ed. Miranda B. Hickman and John D. McIntyre (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2012); Helen Thaventhiran, Radical Empiricists: Five Modernist Close Readers
© 2025 University of Chicago Press

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. CONTENTS v
  3. Preface vii
  4. ON CLOSE READING
  5. Introduction 1
  6. The Rise and Rise of Close Reading 3
  7. Toward a General Theory of Reading 20
  8. Techne, Technique, Technology 28
  9. Close Reading as Technique 36
  10. Showing the Work of Reading 47
  11. Coda : On Attention to Literature 73
  12. ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY 87
  13. Acknowledgments 125
  14. Index 127
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https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226837444-003

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. CONTENTS v
  3. Preface vii
  4. ON CLOSE READING
  5. Introduction 1
  6. The Rise and Rise of Close Reading 3
  7. Toward a General Theory of Reading 20
  8. Techne, Technique, Technology 28
  9. Close Reading as Technique 36
  10. Showing the Work of Reading 47
  11. Coda : On Attention to Literature 73
  12. ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY 87
  13. Acknowledgments 125
  14. Index 127
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