Close Reading Archive

“writers and their close readers are certainly the strongest forces in literature”

—Boris Tomashevsky (1925)

“Close reading is absolutely essential to those who are going to do work in literature”

—Osmond T. Robert (1926)

“a close reading of the sonnet forces us to understand it”

—Ruth C. Wallerstein (1927)

“It is time to return to close reading”

—Louis Aragon (1928)

“All respectable poetry invites close reading”

—I. A. Richards (1929)

“Nothing in [Arnold’s] prose work, therefore, will stand very close analysis”

—T. S. Eliot (1930)

“Close reading shows the dominance of the factual over the sensuous in the poetry [of Dryden and Pope]”

—Martha Pfaff (1931)

“I think you sometimes read with your eye a little too close to the page”

—Conrad Aiken (1932)

“A cumulative deposit remains in their minds from sustained and close reading”

—William S. Knickerbocker (1933)

“We should recognize the value of close reading in the training of superior students especially” 

—Tom B. Haber (1934)

“a man like Valéry emerges from his books without a close reading” 

—Wallace Stevens (1935)

“Make close reading a necessity for getting the story” 

—Bulletin of the Texas State Department of Education (1936)

“critics who have written about [The Awkward Age] seem to have found it not worth the extremely close and alert reading it demands”

—F. R. Leavis (1937)

“It means close reading”

—Virginia Woolf (1938)

“A course in the close reading of lyric poetry with attempt to decide what constitutes critical comment” 

—Bread Loaf School of English Catalog (1939)

“Dr. Bernard’s ‘close reading’ of my close reading of Thurstone was apparently not quite close enough”

—Robert K. Merton (1940)

“Never before, at least in English and American Letters, have we had so much close reading”

—Norman Foerster (1941)

“Close reading for what, when, of how much of a play or novel?”

—Christine M. Gibson (1942)

“Only lately, and thanks mainly to the influence of Mr. I. A. Richards, has anyone tried again to teach poetry as Bowyer seems to have taught Shakespeare and Milton”

—Arthur Mizener (1943)

“The sort of close reading that has to precede translation has dropped out of education”

—Louis C. Zahner (1944)

“careful analysis of the texts themselves by a class under the guidance of the teacher results in close reading and sober judgment”

—Herbert Weisinger (1945)

“Coleridge has a method . . . it is the method of close reading”

—Howard Hall Creed (1946)

“to see this plainly will require a closer reading than most of us give to poetry”

—Cleanth Brooks (1947)

“close reading . . . can only be understood on the analogy of microscopic analysis” 

—Stanley Edgar Hyman (1948)

“a course in close reading is inescapably necessary”

—Raymond Williams (1949)

“I think ‘close reading’ would be a better phrase than New Criticism”

—Malcolm Cowley (1950)

“Biblical exegesis (doubtless the archetype of our literary ‘close reading’ of texts)”

—Austin Warren (1951)

“‘close-reading’ (a cant phrase of the antibiographist)”

—Leslie A. Fiedler (1952)

“for all the ‘close’ reading they recommend, there appears to be in colleges less general reading”

—Van Wyck Brooks (1953)

“The ability to read closely is a skill that you need to use often”

—English for Today (1954)

“close reading is in error when it takes the work away from the author”

—Walter Havighurst (1955)

“the potentially valuable emphasis on ‘close reading’ often has been nullified also by the creation of routine formulae for analysis”

—Louise M. Rosenblatt (1956)

“Hundreds of American books are receiving now almost their first ‘close’ reading”

—Randall Stewart (1957)

“‘close’ reading has not yet perceptibly increased the affection of the public for fiction and poetry”

—Don Geiger (1958)

“Leavis’ close reading is in fact a simple misreading”

—Harold Bloom (1959)

“there is no substitute for close reading”

—R. P. Hewett (1960)

“the habit of close reading had declined with the decline of classical education”

—Douglas Bush (1961)

“the current reactions against ‘close’ criticism . . . often give evidence that these mechanical versions have been equated with the whole approach”

—Reuben A. Brower & ‎Richard Poirier (1962)

“Today one senses danger from the over-anxiety of some teachers to train their pupils in close reading”

—L. C. Knights (1963)

“a technique of close reading unrelated to a genuine sensitivity to literary value can in itself be of no more significance than a skill in doing crossword puzzles”

—David Daiches (1964)

“Close reading (a dying art in our soap-selling culture)”

—Richard Starnes (1965)

“Linguistics is just one form of training in close reading”

—Roger Fowler (1966)

“As so often, when it comes to actual close reading the students reveal that they cannot do it”

—David Holbrook (1967)

“too much close reading can drive one out of his mind”

—Dennis Rygiel (1968)

“there is no real evidence that close reading itself affects either the quantity or quality of what students produce”

—James Hoetker (1969)

“Surely we absorbed the cultural values inherent in close reading”

—Richard Ohmann (1970)

“‘Close reading’ . . . remains curiously timid when challenged to reflect upon its own self-consciousness”

—Paul de Man (1971)

“Today the school of New Critics seems to have passed into history, but their methods of close reading can be discerned not far below the surface of most serious analysis of poetry”

—Lawrence I. Lipking & A. Walton Litz (1972)

“These new critics of literature replaced the pseudoscience of philology with the pseudoscience of the ‘close reading’”

—John V. Fleming (1973)

“the possibly dead-ended process of close reading that we learned at our fathers’ knees”

—Vern Rutsala (1974)

“[Vendler’s] kind of ‘close reading’ is pretty much beyond me, I’m afraid”

—Elizabeth Bishop (1975)

“we are all New Critics now, in that it requires a strenuous effort to escape . . . the requirement of ‘close reading’”

—Jonathan Culler (1976)

“two-thirds of close reading is simply learning about the existence of the OED, and the other third is learning how to use it”

—William C. Dowling (1977)

“The method of close reading became the pedagogical weapon of the New Criticism”

—René Wellek (1978)

“The methodology of ‘close reading’ was an attempt not to imitate science but to refute its devaluation of literature”

—Gerald Graff (1979)

“The authority of language can only be tested by close reading”

—Geoffrey Hartman (1980)

“deconstruction is exactly close reading”

—Mary Jacobus (1981)

“Close reading of literary texts is the ground that nearly all theories and methods build upon or seek to occupy”

—William E. Cain (1982)

“I could commend close reading, but only as an initial strategy”

—Stephen Greenblatt (1983)

“Close reading of any critical complexion is what this volume advocates”

—Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (1984)

“The preparation of a finished close reading was not incompatible with an historical procedure”

—Jerome McGann (1985)

“The real point of close reading is that it produces the right sort of person—a person of evident worth”

—Anthony Grafton & Lisa Jardine (1986)

“There’s nothing more tedious than endlessly close reading”

—Frank Kermode (1987)

“One just goes to work doing or teaching ‘close reading’”

—J. Hillis Miller (1988)

“translation is essentially the closest reading one can possibly give a text”

—Gregory Rabassa (1989)

“There is no substitute for close reading”

—André Bleikasten (1990)

“close reading is what I want to happen”

—Clifford Geertz (1991)

“close reading rests precariously on a number of shaky assumptions”

—Peter J. Rabinowitz (1992)

“it is foolish to attempt a close reading of a poem in a language one doesn’t know”

—Louise Glück (1993)

“While the ‘close reading’ de Man recommends is an act of respect for, and receptiveness to, the text itself, it cannot give access to what the text denies, excludes, or distorts”

—Barbara Johnson (1994)

“Arguably, close reading has never been close enough”

—Isobel Armstrong (1995)

“I would rather think of a close reader as someone who goes inside a room and describes the architecture”

—Helen Vendler (1996)

“close reading . . . runs on a thirty-year cycle”

—Shawn Rosenheim (1997)

“political, ethical and juridical responsibility requires a task of infinite close reading”

—Jacques Derrida (1998)

“the method of close reading was never provided with an adequate theoretical ground”

—Mary Poovey (1999)

“The United States is the country of close reading”

—Franco Moretti (2000)

“What surprises me, though, and heartens me, is the survival through all these changes of some commitment to close reading”

—Stanley Fish (2001)

“one must not be afraid of close reading”

—Umberto Eco (2002)

“As a term, close reading hardly seems to leave the realm of so-called common sense”

—Andrew DuBois (2003)

“Perhaps there is finally no alternative to what was called in the Bad Old Days, close reading.”

—Marjorie Perloff (2004)

“There’s nothing elitist about close reading”

—Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (2005)

“all textuality, when subjected to close reading, can be said to be queer”

—Carla Freccero (2006)

“We all believe in close reading; the problem is how to do it”

—Hayden White (2007)

“The practice of close reading is tacitly viewed by many literary scholars as the mark of their tribe”

—Rita Felski (2008)

“the negotiation with close reading is never finished but always getting under way”

—Roland Greene (2009)

“Close reading is at the heart of literary studies”

—Heather Love (2010)

“The ethics of close reading has something to do with respecting what is alive”

—Jane Gallop (2011)

“close reading adopts a stance that takes the work as an end in itself”

—Eric Hayot (2012)

“big data render [close reading] totally inappropriate as a method of studying literary history”

—Matthew Jockers (2013)

“the intensities of close reading cannot help but distort their object”

—Lauren Berlant (2014)

“close reading is not, and has never been, politically neutral”

—Andy Hines (2015)

“The now often undervalued practice of close reading was surprising and fresh when it began in English studies”

—Marjorie Garber (2016)

“Why did it take so long to start writing the history of close reading?”

—Angus Connell Brown (2017)

“the report of the death of close reading was an exaggeration”

—Eric Weiskott (2018)

“close reading is not just a skill but an activity”

—Robert Eaglestone (2019)

“More poems have been close-read in classrooms than in published articles”

—Rachel Sagner Buurma & Laura Heffernan (2020)

“Reading literature closely is a counter-cultural activity”

—Kent Cartwright (2021)

“theory without close reading is empty, but close reading without theory is blind”

—Steven Shaviro (2022)

“Close reading isn’t reading. It’s writing”

—Jonathan Kramnick (2023)

“close reading seems to have become the victim of its own success”

—Marshall Brown (2024)

“the difficulty of defining close reading is an entailment of its nature as technique”

—John Guillory (2025)