EXC 2020 Temporal Communities

The second focus was on a central method of literary studies, namely on close reading.

Keynote by Joseph North: Does Close Reading Have a Politics? | Thursday, 4 July 2024

Chair: Eva Geulen

Particularly in the context of its origins in English and American New Criticism, close reading is often treated as a procedure that approaches its object, the literary text, neutrally and objectively. However, even the central founding figure of close reading, I.A. Richards, clearly acknowledged evaluation as an important aspect of the professional approach to literature: "There is, it is true, a valuation side to criticism. When we have solved, completely, the communication problem, when we have got, perfectly, the experience, the mental condition relevant to the poem, we have still to judge it, still to decide upon its worth." (Richards, Practical Criticism, p. 11.)

Close reading thus necessarily involves value decisions or leads to them, as Richards points out. Additionally, the decision to carry out a close reading in the first place is also shaped by methodological presuppositions that are themselves implicated in value judgments within literary theory. And finally, close reading is always related to ideologies and political attitudes that bring about its application or its rejection. 

In recent years, Joseph North at Yale University has drawn attention to this last point in particular, and we were very pleased to welcome him as keynote speaker on Thursday afternoon. His talk was chaired by Eva Geulen, who has also been working for years on the topicality of close reading for the present and future of literary studies.