Preface  ix

Introduction / Andrew DuBois  1

I. Formalism (Plus)  

Poetry: A Note on Ontology / John Crowe Ransom  43

Keatss Sylvan Historian: History Without Footnotes / Cleanth Brooks  61

Symbolic Action in a Poem by Keats / Kenneth Burke  72

The Ekphrastic Principle and the Still Movement of Poetry; or Laokoon Revisited / Murray Krieger  88

Examples of Wallace Stevens / R. P. Blackmur  111

How to Do Things with Wallace Stevens / Frank Lentricchia  136

Stevens and Keatss To Autumn / Helen Vendler  156

Lycidas: A Poem Finally Anonymous / Stanley Fish  175

After Formalism?  

Literary History and Literary Modernity / Paul de Man  197

Acts of Cultural Criticism / Roland Barthes  216

Nostalgia for the Present / Fredric Jameson  226

The Mousetrap / Catherine Gallagher and Stephen Greenblatt  243

Jane Austens Cover Story (And Its Secret Agents) / Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar  272

Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl / Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick  301

Ulysses and the Twentieth Century / Franco Maretti  321

To Move Without Moving: An Analysis of Creativity and Commerce in Ralph Ellisons Trueblood Episode / Houston A. Baker Jr.  337

The World and the Home / Homi K. Bhabhi  366

Contributors  381

Acknowledgment of Copyrights  385

Index  387

Andrew DuBois

John Crowe Ransom

Cleanth Brooks

Kenneth Burke

Murray Krieger

R. P. Blackmur

Frank Lentricchia

Helen Vendler

Stanley Fish

Paul de Man

Roland Barthes

Fredric Jameson

Catherine Gallagher

Stephen J. Greenblatt

Sandra Gilbert

Susan Gubar

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

Franco Moretti

Houston A. Baker

Homi K. Bhabha

"This book is like no other. . . . It provides a multifaceted and dialogic textual interplay of voices that create for its readers rich opportunities for both scholarship and teaching. . . . Close Reading 'testifies' to the ways expert readers make meaning by paying close attention to the nuances of symbol and language, ideology and structure that make up the muscles and bones of literature. And isn't that what literature professors do, too?"
—Christine Chaney, Pedagogy

"[A] convenient, one-volume collection of seminal 20th century essays of speculative thought on and criticism of literature. . . . [T]his anthology offers the reader a fresh opportunity to reconsider the relative strengths, weaknesses, and commonalities of what Burke himself called 'extrinsic' and 'intrinsic' critical approaches. Recommended." —S. E. Gregg, Choice

“[P]owerful … exemplary….”—John Phillips, European Journal of English Studies

"This book is like no other. . . . It provides a multifaceted and dialogic textual interplay of voices that create for its readers rich opportunities for both scholarship and teaching. . . . Close Reading 'testifies' to the ways expert readers make meaning by paying close attention to the nuances of symbol and language, ideology and structure that make up the muscles and bones of literature. And isn't that what literature professors do, too?"
—Christine Chaney, Pedagogy

"[A] convenient, one-volume collection of seminal 20th century essays of speculative thought on and criticism of literature. . . . [T]his anthology offers the reader a fresh opportunity to reconsider the relative strengths, weaknesses, and commonalities of what Burke himself called 'extrinsic' and 'intrinsic' critical approaches. Recommended." —S. E. Gregg, Choice

“[P]owerful … exemplary….”—John Phillips, European Journal of English Studies

”This scintillating book shows that the alleged death of close reading at the hands of theory and the turn away from literary works themselves have been greatly exaggerated.” —Gerald Graff, University of Illinois, Chicago

”A history, a tool for teaching, a work of learned analysis, this book mediates importantly for a divided discipline, between ’formalists’ and those who do ’cultural studies.’ ’Close reading,’ it shows, necessarily connects all serious criticism, and its argument becomes the basis for a strong pedagogy and for disciplinary rethinking.”—George Levine, Rutgers University

”Debating close reading means doing it. By displaying the inheritance of the greatest New Critics in many of today's greatest critics, this new anthology revives, renews, and advances the cause of literary studies. Andrew DuBois’s long introduction close-reads the close readers with brilliant fidelity, insight, and wit.”—Marshall Brown, University of Washington

“Close Reading is an extremely valuable instrument of literary pedagogy. It recalls its readers to the ethical responsibilities as well as the aesthetic pleasures which are inextricably intertwined within their individual acts of reading.”—Donald E. Pease, Dartmouth College

”This is an important anthology that challenges the assumption of a radical break between formalism and the criticism that followed it. Andrew DuBois’s fine introductory essay usefully fills out the history of the New Criticism, while forcing a reconsideration of some currently widespread theoretical assumptions. The thoughtfully chosen essays anthologized in Close Reading persuasively demonstrate the continuities between formalist and post-formalist criticism and, at the same time, show students the value of close and critical reading.”—Suzy Anger, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

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