In literary criticism, close reading means carefully analyzing a short part of a text. It focuses on specific details rather than general ideas, paying close attention to individual words, sentence structure, the order of sentences, and how the text is organized.
Close reading looks at both the meaning of the text (content) and the way the text is written (form), allowing readers to make observations and provide interpretations.
History
Literary close reading and commentaries have a long history in interpreting religious texts and studying ancient works. For example, Pazand, a type of Middle Persian writing, refers to Zend texts that explain and analyze the Avesta, the holy writings of Zoroastrianism. The Talmud’s scriptural commentaries are often mentioned as early examples of close reading. In Islamic studies, detailed analysis of the Quran has created a large body of work. In Western scholarship, the development of higher criticism and biblical textual criticism in 18th and 19th century Germany helped create methods that treat texts as objects to be studied, without relying on the author’s or religious authority’s views.
In the 1920s, British literary critics like I. A. Richards, his student William Empson, and poet T.S. Eliot created a method called "practical criticism." This method focused on analyzing language and meaning rather than relying on personal impressions or the author’s life.
American New Critics in the 1930s and 1940s promoted close reading as a key tool for analyzing literature. They believed that literary works should be studied as independent, self-contained pieces. They argued that paying attention to details in the text leads to more reliable interpretations than focusing on the author’s intentions, cultural background, or historical context. Critics like Cleanth Brooks, William K. Wimsatt, John Crowe Ransom, and Allen Tate believed that close reading was the best way to study literature because it allowed analysis of how language and structure work together to create meaning. Their ideas influenced American literary criticism and English departments for many years. Even after New Criticism lost popularity in the late 20th century, close reading remained a basic skill for literary critics. By the early 2000s, debates arose about the role of close reading in literary studies, as scholars questioned whether it still had value in a changing academic and cultural environment.
In 2010, the Association of Departments of English (ADE) published articles that re-examined the role of close reading in modern literary studies. The writers noted that changes in academic practices, student interests, and cultural trends had led to new discussions about whether close reading was still relevant. Jonathan Culler pointed out that because close reading had become so common, it was no longer discussed as a key goal of literary criticism. He and others, like Jane Gallop, believed this lack of focus needed to be addressed, as close reading remained a unique strength of studying literature. If New Criticism’s focus on independence had given way to more political approaches to literature, and if technology changed how people read, Culler and Gallop argued that the careful study of language and form still had value. N. Katherine Hayles and John Guillory, who studied how digital media changed reading habits, suggested that close reading skills could still be useful in digital contexts and could work well alongside new ways of reading, such as quickly scanning online texts.
Principles and practice
New Criticism helped make close reading a common practice in universities. However, it focused more on explaining its ideas and giving long examples rather than telling people exactly how to do close reading. John Guillory explains that close reading is a step-by-step process that can be described but not given as strict rules. It is mostly taught through showing examples and having students imitate them.
Vincent B. Leitch noticed that many essays and books about New Criticism, such as John Crowe Ransom’s The New Criticism (1941) and Allen Tate’s A Note on Autotelism (1949), often included what Leitch calls "canonical statements." These were important ideas presented in works like Cleanth Brooks’ The Well Wrought Urn (1947), Rene Wellek and Austin Warren’s Theory of Literature (1949), and W.K. Wimsatt’s The Verbal Icon (1954). In The Well Wrought Urn, the first ten chapters examine poems by British writers like John Donne, William Shakespeare, and T.S. Eliot. The final chapter, "The Heresy of Paraphrase," explains the ideas behind Brooks’ analysis. In Theory of Literature, Wellek and Warren talk about studying literature based on the text itself, using examples like rhythm, metaphor, and myth. However, they do not explain how readers can use these ideas to create their own analyses. Wimsatt’s The Verbal Icon mixes theoretical chapters with discussions about poetry, but he also does not provide clear steps for applying his ideas.
As Culler wrote in an essay for the 2010 bulletin of the American Departments of English, New Critics usually taught by example. In their classrooms, teachers might ask questions about how form and meaning relate or point out parts of a text that students had not noticed. More than fifty years later, the detailed approach of close reading is still important in modern literary studies, even though New Criticism has been replaced by other ideas. Culler mentions Barbara Johnson, a deconstructionist, who believes close reading is valuable because it helps understand parts of a text that are confusing. Although New Criticism and deconstruction differ, Culler says they both value close reading.
In French literary study, close reading is similar to explication de texte, a method of explaining a text in detail, as proposed by Gustave Lanson. As an analytical technique, close reading contrasts with distant reading, a method described by Kathryn Schulz in her article "What is Distant Reading?" about Franco Moretti. Distant reading involves understanding literature not by studying individual texts but by analyzing large amounts of data.
Examples
Brooks's analysis of John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" shows how he uses close reading. In "Keats's Sylvan Historian," he argues that the disagreement about the poem's famous lines is not important. Instead, he explains that the uncertainty in the lines "Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know" should be understood as something the urn itself says (151–153). The poem explores this uncertainty by describing the urn in conflicting ways, calling it both a "bride of quietness" and a "foster-child of silence," as well as a "sylvan historian" (155). This use of opposing descriptions mirrors the urn's own confusing line. Brooks continues by examining how the term "sylvan historian" might mean more than just describing the urn as a historian—it might also refer to the kind of history the urn tells. He notes that this history is unclear because it is not certain "what men or gods" appear on it. As he analyzes the poem’s stanzas, he points out details such as the "unheard melodies" being "sweeter than any audible music," the idea that "action goes on though the actors are motionless," and that the "maiden, always to be kissed, never actually kissed." He also mentions that the "boughs…cannot shed their leaves" and that the "ironic undercurrent" grows stronger until the famous lines (156–159, 164). By carefully following the poem, Brooks concludes that his interpretation comes from the poem itself (164).
Brooks’s close reading is typical of the New Critical focus on the text alone. However, other scholars have used close reading for work that includes political and social ideas, rejecting the New Critical belief that literature exists above worldly concerns while still respecting its careful attention to texts. In The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (1979), Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar used close reading to argue that women writers had unique experiences and ideas. The sixteen chapters of Madwoman explore how women writers expressed their fears about writing, their anger at being forced into traditional roles, and their clever ways of criticizing male-dominated society. These chapters use detailed attention to language, imagery, and form, skills Gilbert and Gubar learned as graduate students in the late 1960s. While the book includes close readings of works like Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, and other novels by the Brontë sisters, it also introduces new political ideas. Reviewers, both academic and general, noted this by calling the authors "gnostic heretics who claim to have found the secret code that unlocks the mysteries in old texts" (Schreiber 11) and their interpretations a "skillful joint peeling away of the layers" of women’s writing" (129).
An even more extreme example is Jacques Derrida’s Ulysses Gramophone, where he spends eighty-six pages analyzing the word "yes" in James Joyce’s Ulysses. J. Hillis Miller describes this as a "hyperbolic, extravagant, even outrageous explosion" of the close reading technique.
Teaching close reading in the United States
In the early to mid-2000s, college professors noticed that many students entering university had weak reading and comprehension skills. This led to a growing need for high school students to learn specific skills needed for college and adult life. These needs helped create the Common Core State Standards in 2009. Since then, English language arts (ELA) teachers, especially in middle and high school, have focused more on teaching students how to use close-reading strategies. Many ELA standards require students to find evidence directly from texts and analyze how words are used in context. For example, the standard CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.9-10.4 asks students to "Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone (e.g., how the language evokes a sense of time and place; how it sets a formal or informal tone)."
Today, most states use the Common Core Standards, and many resources now help teachers teach close-reading strategies. In 2012, Kylene Beers and Robert E. Probst wrote Notice & Note: Strategies for Close Reading, which introduced six "signposts" to help readers identify important moments in literature and encourage close reading. Another resource, created by Beth Burke (NBCT) for the Tampa Bay Times NIE, explains the steps of close reading and how to teach these strategies gradually. She suggests using the "gradual release model," where teachers first model a close reading, then guide students in groups, and finally let students try it alone.
Other ways students are supported include using graphic organizers to help organize ideas and connect them to evidence from texts. Many other resources and guides are available to help students of all levels, including those learning to closely read poetry. For example, The Close Reading of Poetry: A Practical Introduction and Guide to Explication provides tools for this purpose.