Close reading as attentional practice / edited by Marion Thain and Ewan Jones.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Thain, Marion, editor.

Jones, Ewan James, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Attention--History.

Attention.

Close reading (Literary analysis)--History.

Close reading (Literary analysis).

Physical Description:

1 online resource : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, [2026]

Summary:

"Modernity of the digital age is beset by accusations that we are more distracted than ever, and that attention spans have become problematically compressed. It is an important moment, then, to explore the capacity of the tools of ‘close reading’ offered by our humanities disciplines to help develop and enable self-reflexivity around our attentional practices. These practices did not begin with the famous proponents of the early twentieth century but have been in formation since at least the Middle Ages. Exploring examples from the twelfth to the twentieth century, this book explores how methods of reading closely have been tools over the centuries for changing or challenging attentional habits and therefore changing the way the world is experienced"-- De Gruyter Brill.

Contents:

Literary attention, animation and imagined communities in Bernard of Clairvaux's Sermons on the Song of Songs / Julie Orlemanski

Reading as a mode of attention : Medieval prayer practice and the reader's speculation / Racha Kirakosian

Genesis of attention to secular verse : Sir Philip Sidney's Defence of Poesy and Elizabethan poetic theory / Nigel Smith

'A stranger upon earth' : Thomas Traherne, meditation and the form of poetic attention / Jane Partner

Divided : Distraction as a vibrant style of mind in Jane Austen / Natalie M. Phillips and Sydney Logsdon

Aesthetic technologies of attention : Aestheticism, impressionism, criticism and Oscar Wilde / Marion Thain

On interest and being interested : Attention and reading in Proust / Patrick ffrench

Reading in a darkened room : I. A. Richards and the uses of distraction / Ewan Jones

Close reading and the hermeneutic circle of attention / Atti Viragh

Lydia Davis and the power of sentences / Eileen John.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Online resource; title from PDF title page (De Gruyter Brill, viewed October 16, 2025).

Other Format:

Print version: Close reading as attentional practice

ISBN:

9781399521147

1399521144

9781399521130

1399521136

OCLC:

1545082655

Publisher Number:

CIPO000292009

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license