Close Reading: The ReaderFrank Lentricchia, Andrew DuBois An anthology of exemplary readings by some of the twentieth century’s foremost literary critics, Close Reading presents a wide range of responses to the question at the heart of literary criticism: how best to read a text to understand its meaning. The lively introduction and the selected essays provide an overview of close reading from New Criticism through poststructuralism, including works of feminist criticism, postcolonial theory, queer theory, new historicism, and more. From a 1938 essay by John Crowe Ransom through the work of contemporary scholars, Close Reading highlights the interplay between critics—the ways they respond to and are influenced by others’ works. To facilitate comparisons of methodology, the collection includes discussions of the same primary texts by scholars using different critical approaches. The essays focus on Hamlet, “Lycidas,” “The Rape of the Lock,” Ulysses, Invisible Man, Beloved, Jane Austen, John Keats, and Wallace Stevens and reveal not only what the contributors are reading, but also how they are reading. Frank Lentricchia and Andrew DuBois’s collection is an essential tool for teaching the history and practice of close reading. Contributors. Houston A. Baker Jr., Roland Barthes, Homi Bhabha, R. P. Blackmur, Cleanth Brooks, Kenneth Burke, Paul de Man, Andrew DuBois, Stanley Fish, Catherine Gallagher, Sandra Gilbert, Stephen Greenblatt, Susan Gubar, Fredric Jameson, Murray Krieger, Frank Lentricchia, Franco Moretti, John Crowe Ransom, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Helen Vendler |
From inside the book
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... matters in essence political . The arrangement of these selections is not meant to make claims about critical progress or regress ; it is , however , meant to assert that a genuine ( perhaps the central ) debate in twentieth - century ...
... matters of culture and conduct in general that no sheer conventions or ideals of criticism should be allowed to interfere with their development ( this volume ) . The passage points in several ways to the uniqueness of Burke in the New ...
... matter approach . This strategy has the virtue of by- passing the charge of superficiality implicit in the initial set of questions ( veiled accusations ) , while rhetorically returning the favor . It is an approach taken by John Crowe ...
... matters of form . This is the danger of any powerful theory , for such range of application cannot assure a theory's truth , though it may ap- pear to . In fact , range of application may be a point at which to critique a theory , since ...
... matter how the critical pendulum of an era swings , there will likely always be critics who have noth- ing more to prove than their attentive relationship to the object of art , a true reader's relationship , which will always be both ...