How Close Reading Made Us: The Transnational Legacies of New Criticism (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781438498713)

Does reading shape who we are? What happens to the relationship between reading and subject-formation as methods of interpretation travel globally? Yael Segalovitz probes these questions by tracing the transnational journey of the New Critical practice of close reading from the United States to Brazil and Israel in the mid-twentieth century. Challenging the traditional view of New Criticism as a purely aesthetic project, Segalovitz illustrates its underlying pedagogical objective: to cultivate close readers capable of momentarily suspending subjectivity through focused attention. How Close Reading Made Us shows that close reading, as a technique of the self, exerted a far-reaching influence on international modernist literary production, impacting writers such as Clarice Lispector, Yehuda Amichai, William Faulkner, Jo?o Guimar?es Rosa, and A. B. Yehoshua. To appreciate close reading's enduring vitality in literary studies and effectively adapt this method to the present, Segalovitz argues, we must comprehend its many legacies beyond the confines of the Anglophone tradition.

Author: Yael Segalovitz
ISBN-10: 1438498713
ISBN-13: 9781438498713
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Language: English
Published: 03/02/2025
Pages: 318
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.50lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 1.00d