- Docente: Patrick Jones
What distinguishes literary studies from other disciplines? For many critics, the answer to this question is close reading. Jonathan Kramnick, for example, characterises close reading as nothing less than “the symbolic as well as beating heart of literary studies” in the English-speaking world. The methodological principles and procedures governing close reading are nevertheless surprisingly hard to pin down. In this seminar, we will attempt to get a clearer picture of what close reading is by tracing its rich and storied history from the 1920s to the present day. Over the course of the semester, we will read influential essays by figures like I.A. Richards, Cleanth Brooks, Paul de Man, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. We will also test the affordances of the different styles of close reading modelled by these critics through a series of practical exercises.