ABOUT THIS BOOK

John Guillory considers close reading within the larger history of reading and writing as cultural techniques.

At a time of debate about the future of “English” as a discipline and the fundamental methods of literary study, few terms appear more frequently than “close reading,” now widely regarded as the core practice of literary study. But what exactly is close reading, and where did it come from? Here John Guillory, author of the acclaimed Professing Criticism, takes up two puzzles. First, why did the New Critics—who supposedly made close reading central to literary study—so seldom use the term? And second, why have scholars not been better able to define close reading?

For Guillory, these puzzles are intertwined. The literary critics of the interwar period, he argues, weren’t aiming to devise a method of reading at all. These critics were most urgently concerned with establishing the judgment of literature on more rigorous grounds than previously obtained in criticism. Guillory understands close reading as a technique, a particular kind of methodical procedure that can be described but not prescribed, and that is transmitted largely by demonstration and imitation.

Guillory’s short book will be essential reading for all college teachers of literature. An annotated bibliography, curated by Scott Newstok, provides a guide to key documents in the history of close reading along with valuable suggestions for further research.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

John Guillory is the Julius Silver Professor of English at New York University. He is the author of Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation and Professing Criticism: Essays on the Organization of Literary Study, both also published by the University of Chicago Press. Scott Newstok is professor of English and executive director of the Spence Wilson Center for Interdisciplinary Humanities at Rhodes College. He is the author of How to Think like Shakespeare and the editor of several books, including the forthcoming How to Teach Children, a volume of Montaigne’s essays on education. His closereadingarchive.org documents what scholars have written about close reading from the prehistory of modern literary studies to the present.

REVIEWS

“On Close Reading is destined to become a classic. Guillory offers a fresh account of the practice of close reading and its place in the work of academic literary critics. On Close Reading mounts a powerful argument for viewing technique as a form of knowledge—that is, as a form of science.”

— Frances Ferguson, University of Chicago

“In this compact and incisive study, Guillory shows how close reading is attended by mysteries that have long escaped discussion, then untangles these perplexities with meticulousness and flair. Alert to the institutional pressures shaping literary study, yet committed to close reading’s social value, our leading historian of criticism presents an inquiry as groundbreaking as it is air-clearing. Scott Newstok’s annotated bibliography, a treasure in itself, elegantly complements Guillory’s investigation.”

— Douglas Mao, Johns Hopkins University

“As always, Guillory comes in cool, concise, and comprehensive, demystifying one crucial thread in our discipline’s myth of origins. In and even after the age of mass literacy, close reading remains an underspecified method, a vital practice we use both to approximate and to negate scientific knowledge, the last ember of a Promethean fire that still defines the literary humanities.”

— Jed Esty, University of Pennsylvania

“No one has illuminated the situation of literary studies in our time with more power than Guillory. This marvelous volume lays bare the history and theory of a technique so central to the discipline that it is usually taken for granted, but which Guillory reveals as a sign of literature’s vexed relation to a wider world.”

— Mark McGurl, Stanford University

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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