Close Reading: The Basics

Description

By (author) Greenham David

Short /annotation:

Close Reading: The Basics is formulated to bring together reading pleasure and analytic techniques that will engage the student of literature, and enhance their experience.

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Close reading is the most essential skill that literature students continue to develop across the full length of their studies. This book is the ideal guide to the practice, providing a methodology that can be used for poetry, novels, drama, and beyond. Using classic works of literature, such as Hamlet and The Great Gatsby as case studies, David Greenham presents a unique, contextual approach to close reading, while addressing key questions such as:

• What is close reading?
• What is the importance of the relationships between words?
• How can close reading enhance reading pleasure?
• Is there a method of close reading that works for all literary genres?
• How can close reading unlock complexity?
• How does the practice of close reading relate to other theoretical and critical approaches?

Close Reading: The Basics is formulated to bring together reading pleasure and analytic techniques that will engage the student of literature and enhance their reading experience.

Table of contents:

Preface; Introduction; Chapter 1 Seven pleasures of reading; Chapter 2 The semantic context; Chapter 3 The syntactic and thematic contexts; Chapter 4 Getting to the crux of things: Hamlet, a case study; Chapter 5 The iterative context, Part 1: character and plot; Chapter 6 The iterative context, Part 2: sounds and rhythms; Chapter 7 The generic context; Chapter 8 The adversarial context; Conclusion: Adversarial appreciation and the futures of close reading; Glossary; Bibliography

Biographical note:

David Greenham is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of the West of England, UK.