Close Reading

Close reading is a technique pioneered by the so-called ‘New Critics’ of the mid-twentieth century. It consists in reading a text carefully, paying attention to all textual and structural elements including imagery, voice, narrative technique, vocabulary, themes, and ellipses. Though there is no one single method that can be used to approach any text, there are some skills students will learn in the course of this module that will help them understand and analyse most literary texts they will come across. Among others, we will read short stories by modernist classics of the genre including Ernest Hemingway and Katherine Mansfield; a satirical sci-fi story by Kurt Vonnegut; a story by J.D. Salinger and the Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector; as well as a recently published story by the Jamaican-British writer Zadie Smith.