The Structure of Close Reading

• In Event: Imagining the Future(s) of Close Reading

Abstract

1. Objectives
This paper imagines the future of close reading as one in which students are supported to write their own original arguments. I will discuss close reading as an object that’s produced in language, whether writing or conversation—a close reading, rather than reading closely as an activity—and I will draw on my book with Dan Sinykin, Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century. In our book, we define close reading as a practice “of paying attention to a passage of text to account for at least one aspect of its meaning and to make an argument about how it works.” (Princeton, 2025). I will argue that attention to the text is a necessary but not a sufficient aspect of close reading, because a close reading is an argument, and by conceptualizing close reading as argument, we can see that a framework for close reading. We describe close reading as structured by five steps. And by making this structure explicit rather than left implicit and unstated, this central practice can be made clearer for students and its pedagogy more available for teachers.

2. Theoretical Framework
This argument draws on our book, Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century. That book, in turn, draws on two primary theoretical frameworks. First, the long and ongoing conversation in literary theory and in the history of literary studies about close reading that informs the book’s introduction; most recently this includes books by Jonathan Kramnick, John Guillory, and Yael Segalowitz. Second, the book includes twenty-one essays from contributing authors who join us in theorizing close reading’s argumentative structure.

3. Modes of Inquiry
This paper’s modes of inquiry are based on literary theory and the disciplinary history of literary studies.

4. Data Sources
In addition to the literary theory and disciplinary history mentioned in the section above, and in addition to the theoretical frameworks mentioned in the section before that, this paper draws on a century of literary criticism. Close reading coincides with the foundation of literary studies as a modern discipline, roughly in the 1920s. In preparing Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century, Dan Sinykin and I surveyed a large number of the most famous close readings from the last hundred years.

5. Findings
This paper maps close reading into five steps, drawing on the work Dan Sinykin and I do in Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century. Further, it shows that argument is the route and the rationale that connects the steps of close reading; its logic underpins them.

6. Scholarly Significance
This paper reframes the contemporary conversation about close reading that has been active in literary studies in the past several years, and pivots it towards high school education. The steps of close reading that Dan Sinykin and I name and describe are an innovation, and clarify that the logic of close reading is that of argument. This is true from the high school classroom through professional scholarship in literary studies.

Author

• Johanna Winant, Reed College