This slideshow is based on a lecture by Dr Tom Duggett, introducing the practice of close reading in literary study. The lecture includes a detailed close reading of the Wordsworth lyric 'A slumber did my spirit seal'.

1. Dr Thomas J E Duggett
ENG105
Introduction to
Close Reading:
Approaches to
Literary Study
Sample Lecture – Property of Dr Thomas J E Duggett and
Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University

2. ENG105 Introduction to Close
Reading: Approaches to Literary Study
Department of Languages and Culture
Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University
Module Lecturer: Dr Thomas J E Duggett
e-mail: thomas.duggett@xjtlu.edu.cn
Office: C354
Office hours: 13.00-15.00, Mon, Tues, Thurs

3. Lecture 1 – What is Close Reading?
•History
•Definition
•Case Study

4. Before Close Reading
• Long European tradition of reading,
interpreting, and commenting on ‘canonical’
texts:
• classics (antiquity-middle ages), Bible (esp.
middle ages), classics and Bible (Renaissance +
Protestant Reformation)
• C17-C18 – ancient learning overtaken by
modern, Bible historicized, growth of ‘standard’
English, English readership and ‘canon’ –
Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Johnson, etc.
• Early examples of close readings among
Romantics – e.g. De Quincey on Macbeth. But
literary criticism journalistic not academic

5. Before Close Reading
• C19 – Growth of History and social science; literature valued not
for itself but only as evidence of mindset, manners, lifestyle.
(English becomes University subject, replacing classics and
theology)
• E.g. Hippolyte Taine, History of English Literature (1864), proud to
ignore or diminish the text: ‘What revelations do we find in the
calendared leaves of a modern poem? A modern poet, a man like
… Victor Hugo … graduated from a college and traveled,
wearing a dress-coat and gloves, favored by ladies, bowing fifty
times and uttering a dozen witticisms in an evening … Such is
what we detect behind modern meditations and sonnets.’
• Early C20th – Close Reading movement (New Criticism) a
reaction against Taine et al.: back to the text

6. Close Reading
• A special type of reading (thinking, and writing)
• Every word ‘weighed’ – alone and in context
• Attention goes up as word count goes down (expect precision)
• Reading <=> Writing – reading leads to writing out your
‘reading’ of a text
• Combine formal analysis with personal response (feature+effect)
• In ‘pure’ form, reference to text only (I.A. Richards, 1920s)
• Focus on ambiguity (William Empson, 1930s)
• explore richness of meaning, complexity of thought process –
irony, paradox (Cleanth Brooks, 1940s)
• Other methods now lead research (new historicism,
poststructuralism, feminist theory, etc.), but CR still the essential
tool for literary study

7. Close Reading in Practice
William Wordsworth
‘A slumber did my spirit seal’
Fuseli, The Nightmare (1780s) Turner, ‘Tintern Abbey’, 1790s
…the most commented-upon eight lines in all of English literature

8. Wordsworth, ‘A slumber’
A slumber did my spirit seal; 1
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel 3
The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force; 5
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course 7
With rocks, and stones, and trees.

9. Subject
A slumber did my spirit seal; 1
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel 3
The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force; 5
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course 7
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
A change of tense from then to now, and the death of a beloved
woman

10. speaker
A slumber did my spirit seal; 1
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel 3
The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force; 5
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course 7
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
The speaker disappears: my (object, possessive) – I (pure subject) –
past ‘you’ to ‘she’, and then on to ‘it’ (in ‘a thing’ and in ‘spirit’) – the
uncanny, taken-for-granted but unknown ‘it’ of time, weather, existence

11. Words – types
A slumber did my spirit seal; 1
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel 3
The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force; 5
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course 7
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
nouns verbs adverbs adjectives
pronouns conjunctions prepositions articles, etc.

12. words – concrete?
A slumber did my spirit seal; 1
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel 3
The touch of earthly years.
Terms from
physics No motion has she now, no force; 5
(Newton)
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course 7
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
No word above 2 syllables – except diurnal
concrete abstract

13. sleep, but with
sense of
words – notable
exhaustion and ghost or ‘sense of close up, v. from
absence rather self’, mind, etc. n., a seal,
than rest meaning official
A slumber did my spirit seal; personal
or 1
v. unusual in I had no human fears: stamp
context. Verb
to think She seemed a thing that could not feel 3
comes from
noun ‘thing’. The touch of earthly years.
To think is to
be thing-ed
(to be thought No motion has she now, no force; 5
by daily, but with emphasis on
language?!) – She neither hears nor sees; activity in the day, and so
How do I more sense of alternation
know what I Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course 7
think until I With rocks, and stones, and trees.
see what I
say? – E. M.
Forster unusual repetition synonyms(?)
(C20th

14. words – negation
A slumber did my spirit seal; 1
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel 3
The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force; 5
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course 7
With rocks, and stones, and trees.

15. Phrasing
A slumber did my spirit seal;
…
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
S O O S
A slumber did my spirit seal or A slumber did my spirit seal
- Can a ‘slumber’ do anything? But can a spirit?
- Which reading makes the poet more active? Which reading anticipates line 3?
- What words could replace ‘A’? What difference would it make to the reading?
‘Did seal’ - active construction with double passive effect b/c undecidable
archaic (Shakespearean) – or is there a question we haven’t heard? There is no
title – the poem begins before we are ready, already in the middle

16. Shape and sound – stanzas
stanza break
A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.
=:?
No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course
With rocks, and stones, and trees.

17. Shape and sound – enjambment
A slumber did my spirit seal; 1
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel 3
The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force; 5
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course 7
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
Most lines are end-stopped. These lines run-on. Fluency? Loss of control?
Meaning in lines 3-4?

18. Shape and sound – rhythm
Iambic (-/), tetrameters/trimeters (8/6 ‘feet’)
No word above 2 syllables – except diurnal
/ / _ / _ / / /
No motion has she now, no force; 5
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course 7
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
Form matches sense: the iambic rhythm is broken (spondee) and forward ‘motion’ pauses –
or accumulates in the triple stress
Metrical line with upward intonation (triple or quadruple stress – is ‘nor’ stressed?)
Spondee (//) with strong downward intonation, and feeling of ‘motion’ and ‘force’ released in
the round vowel sounds (assonance) and alliteration on liquid rhotic ‘r’

19. Shape and sound – rhyme
A slumber did my spirit seal; 1
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel 3
The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force; 5
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course 7
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
abab rhyme scheme – full rhymes, but some slightly ‘off’ – seal/heal would be
closer

20. Shape and sound – phonetic effects?
A slumber did my spirit seal; 1
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel 3
The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force; 5
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course 7
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
Read aloud and see what happens. Rhythm + Weak forms (e.g. ə) + elision and
catenation =>
Aslumber earth thing / earthing ocean drowned inert die urn
cor(p)se rock sand stone sand trees

21. Shape and sound – punctuation
A slumber did my spirit seal; 1
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel 3
The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force; 5
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course 7
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
• Punctuation within line for 1st time in line 8. Punctuation (separation) instead of
cohesive language. We slow down. We read silently, in effect,
‘rocksandstonesandtrees’, but aloud ‘rocks. And stones. And trees.’ But also the
opposite, b/c no elision in silent reading.
• Note the unexpected stress force of 'With' - which makes us question all the more
strongly in what if any sense a person can be 'with' rocks, stones, and trees.

22. A slumber did my spirit seal; 1
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel 3
The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force; 5
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course 7
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
Cleanth Brooks: ‘touch of earthly years’ is key: speaker’s beloved is touched by time,
and the poem is about the horror of this fact, with a black irony at end
F. W. Bateson: speaker finds comfort in the idea of beloved as part of ‘holy’ course
of nature

23. • Read ‘model’ close reading
• Questions:
• What academic ‘error’ can you see in the
writing? Is it really an error?
• Do agree with the point about ‘redundancy’?
What is the effect of synonymy in poetry?
• How does the writer use textual evidence – the
repetition of ‘earth’ to develop an interpretation
of the poem’s meaning?
• How would you interpret the final lines? Do we
have hope or despair? How is the poem
ecological?