How to Close Read:

Part 1
Prof. Margaret Kim
  Take notes
 Underline elements in the text that intrigue, interest, and/or
attract you, and things that you question, find disturbing, or find
contradictory
 Summarize the plot or re-tell the story in your way
Preparation  Visualize the text as if you were watching a movie
 Ask and discuss any questions you may have with your instructor
 Note any elements, ideas, or questions that repeatedly appeal to
you
 Distinguish between the text, its context, and your subjective view
  Summarize the plot
 Catalogue the ideas or things you see
DO NOT, in  Prepare a lecture for your reader
the close  Explain everything
reading  Discuss the text in the order in which the material of the text is
presented, from beginning, middle, to end
proper~  Seek the moral lesson or the one right answer to the text
  Assignments and exams for this course
 The selection of passages was random
Passage  There is no “right answer” or the “right way” to analyze the
Analysis passage
  Anyone who can read can do it
 Knowing the cultural context in which it was produced helps
 The fundamental significance of formal elements: Everything in a
Assumptions work of art or poetry contributes to its expression of meaning and
every formal element has its place in the overall meaningful
of close design of art or literature
reading  Meaning, however, is plural
 There is a back-and-forth relation between parts and whole, the
particular and the general, and the basic linguistic strategies and
the larger agenda of the text
  Close reading is not possible without the reading subject: YOU
 Because YOU occupy a unique subject-position in the world, your
interpretation of literature constitutes your intellectual
engagement with writing
 You are here to understand the text, NOT to express your ideas
Between you about whatever ideas that the text triggers in you
and the text  As readers we are after knowledge rather than moral learning
 Inhabit the text from within: Identify with the text
 View the text from without: Critique the text
 Understand your relation to the text in terms of values: Your own
value system, the text’s own value system
Hans Holbein
the Younger,
Portrait of
Thomas More
Icarus
Still Life
Damoiselles
d’Avignon