This was engaging and the discussion of contextualism fair but your description of close reading is a bit of a fantasy. Given the sheer necessity of context to understand the meaning of language, it's inconceivable that any analytical framework would ask for context-free interpretation. That's not what close reading was about. Close reading would presume you start your analysis with a full contextual awareness of the significance of the text but it then uniquely focused on formal properties: given what you know the text to mean, why these words instead of others? Why in this order with this syntax? What resonance do they have with other phrases and ideas in the text? etc. This simply set it in contrast to prior kinds of analysis which dealt only in broad strokes with themes, characters, morals and so on.
Totally aware of this caricature of close-reading I built to make a point, but I entirely agree with you. There is no context-free interpretation, not even close-reading. Thanks for the clarification!
Thanks for this! It definitely does address a qualm I had about your mention of Thomas Ford’s fragmentation in a recent video. I disagreed that regarding the whole of a text in general makes for a shallow reading, just because you’ve been interacting with people who spout shallow readings and then can’t point to where specifically in the text they got their interpretation from. When you summarize Ford’s fragmentation, then I understand what it’s getting at…when the alternative is somebody with a shallow reading that can’t pinpoint where in the text specifically that reading comes from, so they might as well not have read it…but then there wasn’t a standard in that summary for exactly how fragmented the poem excerpt must be. A singular word such as “tiger” could have been fragmented from a William Blake poem (“The Tyger”) or a Dennis Cooper poem (“First Sex”) in which the explications about the tiger are very different. In which case, yes, we can’t drag somebody up to the blackboard to meditate upon the word “tiger” until they magically know the profoundness of its literary meaning…because there’s interrelations with all the other words in this word’s respective unit of work (1 poem), and beyond that if that scope is established. (I’m also thinking of a 2023 thesis by Peter Egger, titled 'Tracing Fanwork from Source to Its Furthest Extreme’ that I thought declared an interesting mode of interpretation that rejected both the nitpicky fragmented close-readings as well as the statistical general measure of everything. But what that left appeared to be thematic coding of a handful of specific works, in which case when does that become biased cherry-picking of examples to bolster the thesis statement versus the more understandable discernment of what works are relevant to the thesis? But I appreciated that the scope examined the fanbase activity surrounding three Broadway musicals that I was very familiar with, particularly prose and illustrations inspired by those source materials. I suppose it’s like dots in a constellation, and if somebody else thinking “no that’s not a big ladle, that constellation is a bear” then they had better write their own thesis, throwing shade at the author of the previous thesis in the footnotes, and then maybe that’s how it really goes. )
Your interpretation is structurally incorrect. That makes all your conclusions unreliable. The meaning of words is not fixed but context specific and you could say assigned but implies a formality that is perhaps missing. But this doesn’t mean the meaning of words is arbitrary but it means the opposite. The meaning is temporarily or contextually specific. That difference is vital for saying anything further without confusing yourself.
OK, I have really been enjoying your work on YouTube and found your Substack. After reading the comments below, I feel that I am in the wrong sandbox, but there you go. Every time I start to feel smart, I find more people who are way smarter than me. Ah well, it keeps me humble. I really enjoyed the theories in this article and will keep reading.
This was engaging and the discussion of contextualism fair but your description of close reading is a bit of a fantasy. Given the sheer necessity of context to understand the meaning of language, it's inconceivable that any analytical framework would ask for context-free interpretation. That's not what close reading was about. Close reading would presume you start your analysis with a full contextual awareness of the significance of the text but it then uniquely focused on formal properties: given what you know the text to mean, why these words instead of others? Why in this order with this syntax? What resonance do they have with other phrases and ideas in the text? etc. This simply set it in contrast to prior kinds of analysis which dealt only in broad strokes with themes, characters, morals and so on.
Totally aware of this caricature of close-reading I built to make a point, but I entirely agree with you. There is no context-free interpretation, not even close-reading. Thanks for the clarification!
Thanks for this! It definitely does address a qualm I had about your mention of Thomas Ford’s fragmentation in a recent video. I disagreed that regarding the whole of a text in general makes for a shallow reading, just because you’ve been interacting with people who spout shallow readings and then can’t point to where specifically in the text they got their interpretation from. When you summarize Ford’s fragmentation, then I understand what it’s getting at…when the alternative is somebody with a shallow reading that can’t pinpoint where in the text specifically that reading comes from, so they might as well not have read it…but then there wasn’t a standard in that summary for exactly how fragmented the poem excerpt must be. A singular word such as “tiger” could have been fragmented from a William Blake poem (“The Tyger”) or a Dennis Cooper poem (“First Sex”) in which the explications about the tiger are very different. In which case, yes, we can’t drag somebody up to the blackboard to meditate upon the word “tiger” until they magically know the profoundness of its literary meaning…because there’s interrelations with all the other words in this word’s respective unit of work (1 poem), and beyond that if that scope is established. (I’m also thinking of a 2023 thesis by Peter Egger, titled 'Tracing Fanwork from Source to Its Furthest Extreme’ that I thought declared an interesting mode of interpretation that rejected both the nitpicky fragmented close-readings as well as the statistical general measure of everything. But what that left appeared to be thematic coding of a handful of specific works, in which case when does that become biased cherry-picking of examples to bolster the thesis statement versus the more understandable discernment of what works are relevant to the thesis? But I appreciated that the scope examined the fanbase activity surrounding three Broadway musicals that I was very familiar with, particularly prose and illustrations inspired by those source materials. I suppose it’s like dots in a constellation, and if somebody else thinking “no that’s not a big ladle, that constellation is a bear” then they had better write their own thesis, throwing shade at the author of the previous thesis in the footnotes, and then maybe that’s how it really goes. )
“asking an isolated passage: What do you mean!? after dragging its face out of the toilet.” 🤣🤣
Loved this!! Super accessible but not watered down. Will definitely be referring back to these thoughts. Thank you! 🫡
Your interpretation is structurally incorrect. That makes all your conclusions unreliable. The meaning of words is not fixed but context specific and you could say assigned but implies a formality that is perhaps missing. But this doesn’t mean the meaning of words is arbitrary but it means the opposite. The meaning is temporarily or contextually specific. That difference is vital for saying anything further without confusing yourself.
OK, I have really been enjoying your work on YouTube and found your Substack. After reading the comments below, I feel that I am in the wrong sandbox, but there you go. Every time I start to feel smart, I find more people who are way smarter than me. Ah well, it keeps me humble. I really enjoyed the theories in this article and will keep reading.