If you have been assigned a close reading as an assignment, circle keywords or ideas that the professor uses in the guidelines. You'll want to include these words and concepts in your answer. Next, ...

If you have not been assigned a passage or poem, then you must select a text and a specific passage. Limit your selection to a paragraph or two at the most. In some cases, a sentence or two (or a few ...

(This is the last post in a three-part series on this topic. You can see Part One here and Part Two here.) This week’s question is: What is “close reading,” is it important and, if so, how should I ...

Iwas an English major in college, but I didn’t like it. I didn’t understand why I should pay to study literature when I knew how to read and could do so more happily on my own time. Like many others, ...

W hen I was an undergraduate at Amherst College, it was a rite of passage for all English majors to discover that they had entirely misunderstood Robert Frost’s most famous poem “The Road Not Taken” ( ...

This week’s question is: What is “close reading,” is it important and, if so, how should I teach it? Part One in this series featured responses from Christopher Lehman, Cris Tovani, Pernille Ripp, Jan ...

The invention of close reading. By transforming quotations into evidence, close reading served as way to turn postwar criticism into a specialized knowledge. But what if we treated it more as an art ...