greatblackowl t1_iyd7wgo wrote on November 30, 2022 at 3:16 PM

Reply to comment by ThrowingSomeBruddahs in The Time Traveler's Wife and the State of Romance in 2003 by ThrowingSomeBruddahs

I'll admit to not knowing the term "close reading" prior to a moment ago, but from my brief research, it seems that the idea of a close reading is not to do it out of context-- that you should read a book prior to doing a close reading of the book's prologue?

It's been a few years since I've read it, but my recollection is that the time-travelling is more a representation of miscommunication and alienation from someone very constant and familiar, rather than of someone going to work. I'm not sure what that does to the close reading of the "men at sea" section but it certainly seems relevant.

ThrowingSomeBruddahs OP t1_iyf8wb0 wrote on November 30, 2022 at 11:16 PM

I think you can perform a close reading on any self-contained unit, and at least in my experience, close readings are usually performed on smaller units of text, because they pay very close attention to the specific language used in a text in order to build a larger interpretation of what the text means.

In this case, the self-contained unit I chose to examine was the prologue. However, it seems like my mentioning that this was “just from the first four pages” wasn’t a clear enough signpost that I was just reading the prologue. I’ll be more clear in the future about exactly what I’m up to.