Essay 1: Close-Reading Edgar Huntly, or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker
Your goal for this assignment is to write a paper that illuminates some aspect of Brown’s project. To form a view of Brown’s project ask yourself: What does Brown’s novel do? How does it speak to one of the contexts (i.e. socioeconomic, political, history of ideas, etc.) or themes that we have so far discussed? What is its sociopolitical and/or sociocultural force? Make one major claim about Brown’s project and develop it through three or four minor claims, grounding each in vivid and original close-readings of carefully chosen passages.
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What does “project” mean?
Think about all the ways you might have been taught to think about the job of writing a paper. You might think a paper should aim to tell us what a work means or what the author intended it to mean. Try instead to take aim at what the work DOES. The word “project” captures this nuance, and your paper will be better off insofar as you aim there. You can’t really know for sure what the author’s intention may have been so you want to avoid in academic/critical writing addressing yourself to the job of mind-reading, but what you can do is make claims based in evidence (your close-reading analyses) about how the work ACTS, what the work does do, how it affects us, what it leads us to see/think, what its force is.
What is close-reading?
Close-reading is a synonym for “analysis.” It is term associated with the English discipline that we use to designate a particular style of zoomed in or “close” analysis in reading and writing. This technique calls for looking at language “closely,” as if under a microscope, so as to see — register, receive — as much of its meaning as possible. When close-reading, we slow down and pay careful attention to language so as to notice how it works to create the meaning that it does. Close-reading aspires for accuracy and objectivity in reading, taking interpretation to be an empirical activity, rather than a vague, fast, or purely intuitive one. In this mode we treat language as a thing to be examined, an object like a work of art –– something that is material and constructed. We aim to notice how words are arranged to create the effects that they do: how particular words are used in particular contexts by particular writers living at particular points in time and in particular environments. Your first impressions while reading are important, but the goal of close-reading is to substitute your first impressions with careful observation because careful observation promotes richer, more accurate understanding. Use the “Categories for Close-Reading” as a guide and your understanding will grow vivid! The objective, then, of your essay is to present your results–– your vivid understanding, your close-reading –– to us, your readers. Show us what you have worked so hard to see, and tell us why it matters that we should strive to see it too.
1) Claims: an original, non-obvious major claim that you develop through 3-4 original, non-obvious minor claims and a concluding final paragraph that feels like a culmination/summation.
2) Close-reading: each paragraph should be organized around a direct quotation that functions as evidence and which you analyze carefully in order to show HOW your minor claim (stated in your topic sentence) is true or strong. It’s not enough to prove THAT a claim is true; good academic writing shows us HOW the claim is true/strong. Even more sophisticated if you can develop your analysis enough not only to show us HOW your minor claim is true/strong but also HOW the minor claim connects back to your overarching major claim and therefore makes that true/strong. Consider that the job of close-reading is to SHOW US HOW a minor claim is true/strong and a minor claim’s job is to show us HOW AND WHY your major claim is true/strong, HOW AND WHY we should care about and agree with your major claim.
