Close Reading without Readings

Essays on Shakespeare and Others

By (author) Stephen Booth

Not available to order

Publication date:

14 December 2015

Length of book:

208 pages

Publisher

Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

ISBN-13: 9781611478914

Dealing mainly with the works of William Shakespeare, the essays in Close Readings without Readings reflect Stephen Booth’s lifelong interest in uncovering the ways great literature works upon readers. As the book’s title suggests, the author does not aim to create new or novel interpretations or to uncover the political agendas of literary works, but to notice language patterns—repetitions, analogies, correspondences, echoes, overtones—and other ways in which the choice and the arrangement of words affect readers. For Booth, close reading is a practice of attentiveness. He notices how, why, and in what ways Shakespeare’s works affect his readers. Whether readers agree with the premises of a literary work or not, they subject themselves, knowingly or not, to its effects. For Booth, what we value in literature is the experience. He has devoted his own work to recognizing the nature, process, and functions of reading literature, and to teaching others to do the same. Recent years have seen Booth’s efforts recognized by volumes dedicated both to close reading and to his achievements as editor, scholar, critic, and teacher.

Foreword
1. Poetic Richness, A Preliminary Audit: Antony and Cleopatra 3.10
2. The Acquiescent Audience
3. Desdemona’s Eyes and the Aesthetics of Blindness
4. 2 Henry IV and the Aesthetics of Failure
5. Faith in The Winter’s Tale and Faith in The Winter’s Tale
6. A Discourse on the Witty Partition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream
7. Twelfth Night and Othello: Those Extraordinary Twins
8. Deviation, Variation, and Variety in Stanza One of Venus and Adonis
9. On the Eventfulness of Hero and Leander
10. Prelapsarian Eroticism: Paradise Lost
11. On the Aesthetic Significance of Non-Signifying Signification in Romeo and Juliet
12. Liking Julius Caesar
13. On the Value of Hamlet
Index

There is much to learn from this collection, especially for students new to the game. As ever, the lesson is simple: pay attention to the object of literary art—not just to its subject—and to the behavior of your mind as it pays attention. Read Booth’s book, therefore, and again and again; and, this time, may the lesson take.