What close reading is

A term you'll meet in literary method.

Close reading is the careful, sustained analysis of a short passage of text — paying minute attention to word choice, imagery, sound, syntax, and form to show how the writing produces its meaning and effect. It's the foundational skill of literary study.

What you actually do

You slow down. Instead of summarising what a passage says, you ask how it says it: why this word and not a synonym, what the metaphors imply, how the rhythm or sentence shape guides the reader, where the text is ambiguous or tense. Every detail is treated as a deliberate choice worth interrogating.

Where it comes from

Close reading was central to the "New Criticism" of the early-to-mid twentieth century, which insisted that the meaning of a literary work lives in the text itself — its words and structure — rather than in the author's biography or the reader's mood. The poem on the page was the evidence, and nothing else was needed to read it.

The form is part of the meaning

The core conviction of close reading is that form and content can't be separated. How something is written is part of what it means. A close reader treats line breaks, punctuation, and sound as carriers of sense — not packaging around an idea, but the idea taking shape.

How to practise it

Pick a short passage and read it several times. Mark what surprises you, what repeats, what jars. Ask what each notable choice does, then build a small argument connecting those details to an overall effect. Good close reading turns "I like this" into "here is exactly how this works, and why it matters."

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