On Close Reading

The Close Reading Archive is a free public humanities database created by Scott Newstok  (GSAS ’02) in conjunction with John Guillory’s book On Close Reading, to which Newstok also contributed an annotated bibliography. With over 2,500 entries, the Close Reading Archive documents key moments in the still-unfolding history of close reading, from its tentative origins to the recent flood of scholarship on the subject. In aggregate, the archive corroborates that the phrase “close reading” has remained in contentious circulation across a century of Anglo-American criticism. Constructed on the principle of quotation rather than narration, the archive recovers a tacit discourse that is happening in, below, and through all sorts of other arguments. Early comments about close reading tend to stem from outside the university, while contemporary scholars increasingly attempt to establish the genealogy of the practice. Guillory discussed his work at the 2023 Harvard English Fall Graduate Symposium, and On Close Reading was recently reviewed in the TLS and the Chronicle of Higher Education.