A four to five page paper exploring in depth how the language and characters develop a stance on one of the forms of duty in one of the texts we have studied between Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales.
Close Reading is an analysis focused on the formal features of a work: language, structure, literary / poetic elements. There is nothing mystical about what literary critics do when they analyze texts—rather than being issued magic goggles that enable them to see things in a text that are invisible to others, critics actually engage in a process that anyone can learn.
A few notes on what close reading is not:
• Close reading is not speculation. There is a difference between guessing and supporting a claim with evidence from the text. In fact, you may not make a claim, point, or argument about a text unless you have some kind of evidence from the text to back it up.
• Close reading is neither summary nor paraphrasing. A simple surface level description does not count; close reading is more akin to analysis or “unpacking” the various meanings of a text. Close reading is understanding, noticing, and exposition (explaining the meaning of a text).
I have posted pdf and links for these work
for (The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale) – https://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/teachslf/wbt-par.htm
