Making Sense of Close Reading

The term ‘close reading’ is problematic for English teachers, yet a heightened awareness of the role that language plays in mediating experience and social relationships is fundamental to an informed and critically engaged citizenry. This essay finds that a focus on abstracted ideological content of literary texts comes at the cost of material, aesthetic considerations of language or ‘literariness’: it is the baby that has been thrown out with the bathwater. The essay argues that a false dichotomy between a literary education as ‘cultural studies’ and the study of ‘Culture’ (with a capital C) has diverted attention from the relationship between words and meaning. It draws on the work of Raymond Williams in contending that a renewed concept of ‘close reading’ should be at the heart of English teachers’ professional practice.