close reading

English

Noun

close reading (countable and uncountable, plural close readings)

1. (literature) The careful, sustained interpretation of a brief passage of a text.
   • 2010 July 1, Heather Horn, “Stop Close Reading”, in The Atlantic‎^[1]:

     Students almost universally hate close reading, and they rarely wind up understanding it anyway. Forced to pick out meaning in passages they don't fully grasp to begin with, they begin to get the idea that English class is about simply making things up (Ah yes—the tree mentioned once on page 89 and then never again stands for weakness and loss!)

See also

• New Criticism

Further reading

• close reading on Wikipedia.Wikipedia