![]() Instead, close reading focuses on the formal aspects or the verbal/linguistic elements of a text such as figures of speech, images, symbols, interaction between words, rhythm and metaphor. Endorsing the concept of “autotelic text”, that a text is a unified entity, complete in itself, and containing meaning without any reference to external evidence such as the author’s intention/history, biography or the socio-cultural condititns of its production, the New Critics, Wimsatt and Beardsley cautioned against the fallacies of judging a literary work based on the author’s intention or its impression on the reader, what they called “intentional Fallacy” and “Affective Fallacy”. A technique advocated by the New Critics in interpreting a literary work, Close Reading derived from (I A Richards’s Practical Criticism (1929) and William Empson’s The Seven Types of Ambiguity(1930). ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |