Overview
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, João Guimarães 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.
Full Product Details
Author: Yael Segalovitz
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Imprint: State University of New York Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 2.50cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.227kg
ISBN: 9781438498690
ISBN 10: 1438498691
Pages: 318
Publication Date: 01 September 2024
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Manufactured on demand
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.
Reviews
"""Whereas reader response theory has often been seen as a reaction to New Criticism's focus on the objectivity of the text, How Close Reading Made Us argues that New Criticism has always involved work on the self. Moreover, this work was explicitly political. For American New Critics and their counterparts in Brazil and Israel, changing the reader's psyche had the potential to change society."" — Laura Heffernan, coauthor of The Teaching Archive: A New History of Literary Study ""Segalovitz offers a bold comparative model, one that eschews the tendency to compare 'like to like' in favor of paradox and tension. The juxtaposition of US, Brazilian, and Israeli literatures leads to surprising connections and insights, pushing each tradition out of its hermeneutic comfort zone."" — Adriana X. Jacobs, author of Strange Cocktail: Translation and the Making of Modern Hebrew Poetry"
""Whereas reader response theory has often been seen as a reaction to New Criticism's focus on the objectivity of the text, How Close Reading Made Us argues that New Criticism has always involved work on the self. Moreover, this work was explicitly political. For American New Critics and their counterparts in Brazil and Israel, changing the reader's psyche had the potential to change society."" — Laura Heffernan, coauthor of The Teaching Archive: A New History of Literary Study ""Segalovitz offers a bold comparative model, one that eschews the tendency to compare 'like to like' in favor of paradox and tension. The juxtaposition of US, Brazilian, and Israeli literatures leads to surprising connections and insights, pushing each tradition out of its hermeneutic comfort zone."" — Adriana X. Jacobs, author of Strange Cocktail: Translation and the Making of Modern Hebrew Poetry
Author Information
Yael Segalovitz is Assistant Professor in the Department of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel.
