Close Reading and Wide Reading
Wolfgang Hallet: Close Reading and Wide Reading: The Contextualization of Literary Texts in Literary Theory and the Literary Classroom
The cultural dimension of literary texts is often treated as an extra-textual phenomenon and reduced to factual information provided in historical descriptions of what is called ‘the context’ or in annotations. As against this practice, and with reference to new historicist, interdiscursive and intertextual approaches, it is suggested that literary texts be embedded in a textual network of contextualizing texts. While co-reading them (’wide reading’), readers are able to understand and interpret a literary text (’close reading’) by discovering parallels and correspondences, allusions and recurring themes, notions and motifs as well as references to the cultural situation or issues. This lecture will give examples of what ‘wide reading’ means in literary studies and in the literary classroom.
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Hallet is Professor for Teaching English as a Foreign Language at JLU. For further information, please see his website.
