When Did Close Reading Acquire a Bad Name?

Abstract

This chapter combines theoretical reflection and disciplinary history to consider the impact of critical discourse inspired by Continental philosophy on the evolution of close reading, against the backdrop of modernist studies’ own fluctuating relationship with high theory. Can one blame French theory for a reluctance to engage with the minute stylistic details of a text? The chapter argues that the renewal of modernist studies was brought about by the combination of two factors: a wish to take into account contemporary theory, and a wish to historicize the corpus systematically. As the chapter reveals, the perceived clash between myopic close reading that postpones asking broad questions and the ample sweep of philosophical investigations had already taken place within canonical French theory. The chapter examines the historical and conceptual implications of theory’s relation to close reading for modernist studies today.