Summary and Close Reading Paper

Close reading is the basic mode of formal literary criticism, and a powerful tool in both its own right or in the service of larger arguments. In this series of papers you will develop skills as a close reader. Though an innovation of the twentieth century, we might well think of close reading as a classic old school approach. For instance, in his book The Resistance to Theory, literary critic Paul de Man describes how close reading was taught in freshman literature courses at Harvard in 1950:

Students were not to say anything that was not derived from the text they were considering. They were not to make any statements that they could not support by a specific use of language that actually occurred in the text. They were asked, in other words, to begin by reading texts closely as texts and not to move at once into the general context of human experience or history. Much more humbly or modestly, they were to start our from the bafflement that such singular turns of tone, phrase, and figure were bound to produce in readers attentive enough to notice them and honest enough not to hide their non-understanding behind the screen of received ideas that often passes, in literary instruction, for humanistic knowledge. (23)

You can see what makes close reading both so powerful and so difficult. In a close reading you cannot write about anything outside of the text itself. (These issues are relevant in other areas of English studies, but not in close reading). This includes the following:

Instead, you must focus relentlessly on the language of a work of literature, and you must develop an interpretation that relies solely on the evidence of the text itself.

Though different critics develop close readings in different ways (and you may begin to grow in your own abilities after a few papers) the best place to begin is with an exhaustive investigation of a specific trope. Chose a metaphor, a metonym, a synecdoche, or an irony and develop an argument about how that trope informs the text as a whole. The key to close readings is a sustained analysis of the trope that then connects the specific points of the analysis to the larger themes and meanings of the entire text. Sometimes the trope supports the theme, but just as often they take that theme in directions you would not imagine without close reading.

Close reading is an act of discovery. The best readings begin when you do as de Mann suggests. Start with your ignorance. Choose a striking metaphor or an unusual metonymy that you do not at first understand and then enter into the directed creation of close reading as a journey towards understanding. Understanding is where you will arrive, not where you begin!

Close Reading as a five step technique:

Introduce a quotation that contains the trope you will close read. This can be easy if you are looking at a metonymy or a synecdoche that is only one word in a single sentence, but for an extended metaphor or an irony, you might need much more. Even just a few sentences in a poem by Sharon Olds or story by Angela Carter might have a dozen tropes. You need to be precise and help your reader understand exactly what you are focusing on.

Identify the trope, and then explain its parts. That is, if it is a metaphor, what is being compared to what? If it is a metonymy, what exactly is being associated with what? If it is a synecdoche, what part is standing for what whole? If it is an irony, what exactly is in contradiction with what? To do this successfully, you must engage the exact language of the quotation. Use the precision of the tropes to explain what you are looking at exactly in the quotation.

Explain what the trope highlights. That is, what is the dominant sense of the trope, the most obvious meaning its seems to be articulating? For instance, when a ship's captain calls for “all hands on deck,” the captain wants to direct their labor, which in this synecdoche is represented by the hand ready to work. Notice how in making this argument, one has to understand the authority of the captain to make sense of the subordinate position of the other sailors represented by their hands. Often, getting at what a trope is highlighting means moving between an analysis of trope itself and its position within the whole text.

Explain what the trope hides. Because every trope provides a limited perspective from which to see and understand the world, it necessarily hides some other aspect of its subject. For instance, in calling for “all hands,” the captain is hiding those other parts of his sailors that might be called forth should he, for instance, have called for “all brains” on deck, or had he asked for “all eyes” etc. Again, connecting your analysis of what is hidden to the sense of the whole text is key.

Explain what is empowered and disempowered by the trope. In our example of “all hands on deck,” the sense of power seems obvious. Clearly the captain has the power, and all the other people on the ship become hands, directed by his command. He has the power. And yet, we might point out that he has to summon this power. That in fact without the willing obedience of his “hands,” he is powerless, or that his power is utterly dependent on these others. In a novel like The Mutiny on the Bounty, a phrase like “all hands on deck” could become much more ambiguous. Push yourself to think about how the trope highlights a power relation, but also about how that power relation is then consistent with or contradictory of the text as whole.

Assignment: Choose a story, poem, or play we have read together as a class. In the first section of your paper, write a concise summary. In the second half of your paper, write a close reading.

Summary: In this section, your task is to condense and highlight the most important elements of the text. This involves some difficult judgments, for you must decide on those elements and present them to your audience as clearly as possible. You must avoid all statements of judgement, interpretation, or evaluation in the summary section. Be as complete, precise and objective as possible. Your goal is to communicate as clearly as possible what you have read. Be sure to use a few brief quotations in your summary for clarity and emphasis. Your summary must not exceed 300 words.

Close Reading: Now, your task is to explain how one specific trope informs what the text means. Instead of re-presenting the entire text to your audience, focus on how this one, particular trope informs its meaning. See the explanation of the technique above, and be sure to follow all of the steps. Your close reading should be between 500-800 words.

Format: Your paper must be no more than 1,100 double-spaced words set in a plain, serif font with one-inch margins all around. Your paper should rigorously follow all MLA style guidelines. Please consult the formatting tutorial, The MLA Handbook, and the example paper for other details.

Due Dates: See the course calendar on the website.