ABSTRACT

Close reading is the most essential skill that literature students continue to develop across the full length of their studies. This book is the ideal guide to the practice, providing a methodology that can be used for poetry, novels, drama, and beyond. Using classic works of literature, such as Hamlet and The Great Gatsby as case studies, David Greenham presents a unique, contextual approach to close reading, while addressing key questions such as:

  • What is close reading?
  • What is the importance of the relationships between words?
  • How can close reading enhance reading pleasure?
  • Is there a method of close reading that works for all literary genres?
  • How can close reading unlock complexity?
  • How does the practice of close reading relate to other theoretical and critical approaches?

Close Reading: The Basics is formulated to bring together reading pleasure and analytic techniques that will engage the student of literature and enhance their reading experience.

chapter |7 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|23 pages

Seven pleasures of reading

chapter 2|17 pages

The semantic context

chapter 3|16 pages

The syntactic and thematic contexts

chapter 4|19 pages

Getting to the crux of things

Hamlet, a case study

chapter 5|18 pages

The iterative context

Part 1: character and plot

chapter 6|20 pages

The iterative context

Part 2: sounds and rhythms

chapter 7|23 pages

The generic context

chapter 8|18 pages

The adversarial context

chapter |8 pages

Conclusion

Adversarial appreciation and the futures of close reading