Close reading is one of the fundamental analytical building blocks used to create longer argumentative essays about literature.
Close reading directs the attention of your reader to the details of a short lyric poem, a short passage of a longer poem, a selection from a play, or a passage of a prose work. It interprets those details and makes sense of them. In order to write a successful close reading, you must formulate a thesis to organize your observations (answering the question, “So what?”). You must also account for details that complicate and even contradict that thesis. You must organize your observations and analytical remarks into related paragraphs, with substantive transitions. You must avoid a “listing” approach. Your conclusion should build on the discoveries of the essay. Do not restate your argument.
Instructions:
• identify the work by title and author. If it is a passage from a long
poem, use line numbers: (ll. 35-68).
•quote from the work using proper format and punctuation, described
in Diana Hacker, A Writers Reference and in Gibaldi, MLA Guide.
(Brief guide below).
•use parenthetical citation and proper punctuation.
•titles of short poems, short stories, and essays appear in quotation
marks; novels, book-length poems, and plays get either underlining or italics.
• decide whether you should proceed line by line, or not. If you do,
then you must have an argument that justifies this approach.
• think and write about the whole poem, or the whole passage.
Use the “Questions to ask a Poem” to brainstorm.
• discuss the voice: who speaks to whom? in what tone?
• analyze the imagery.
• analyze the metaphors/similes (including tenor and vehicle).
• analyze the syntax (of the sentences).
• discuss the rhythm, rhyme, alliteration, assonance, and other sound
patterns.
• notice changes, or alterations from the prevailing pattern (for instance,
in a poem that is mainly end-stopped, comment on a change to enjambment).
• be sure to discuss the words and their connotations (use the OED).
•try to anticipate potential questions and objections—then answer them.
•avoid extensive plot synopsis, summary, and long sections of paraphrase.
•always use present tense for authorial actions and textual events.
Quoting and citing:
Use quotations to illustrate your points, but not to state your points for you. Analyze what you quote in a full, thorough paragraph.
If you should quote 4 lines of verse or more, put them in block quotation format, indented and typed out as they appear in the text (with no quotation marks).
Example:
When wolves and tygers howl for prey,
They pitying stand and weep;
Seeking to drive their thirst away,
And keep them from the sheep.
(ll. 25-8)
Fewer than four lines should be integrated into your paragraph, with a / (slash) to indicate a line break. Remember to indicate line #s: (ll. 3-4). Note the punctuation. No short quotation should appear outside one of your own sentences.
Example:
In William Blake’s poem “Night,” angels lament the condition of the fallen world: “When wolves and tygers howl for prey,/They pitying stand and weep” (ll. 25-6).
The same rules pertain to prose and passages from plays, only you may have to type out a longer passage yourself to find out if it exceeds four lines, thus requiring block quotation format.