#close reading
I usually tell my students that “close reading” means looking at what is actually on the page, reading the text itself, rather than some idea “behind the text.” It means noticing things in the writing, things in the writing that stand out. To give you some idea of what this means, I’ve made up a list of five sorts of things that a close reading might typically notice: (1) unusual vocabulary, words that surprise either because they are unfamiliar or because they seem to belong to a different context; (2) words that seem unnecessarily repeated, as if the word keeps insisting on being written; (3) images or metaphors, especially ones that are used repeatedly and are somewhat surprising given the context; (4) what is in italics or parentheses; and (5) footnotes that seem too long. This list is far from complete—in fact, no complete list is possible—but the list is meant to begin to give you an idea of what sorts of things we notice when we’re doing close reading.
What all five of my examples have in common is that they are minor elements in the text; they are not main ideas. In fact, your usual practice of reading which focuses on main ideas would dismiss them all as marginal or trivial. Another thing they have in common is that, although they are minor, they are nonetheless conspicuous, eye-catching: they are either surprising or repeated, set off from the text or too long. Close reading pays attention to elements in the text which, although marginal, are nonetheless emphatic, prominent—elements in the text which ought to be quietly subordinate to the main idea, but which textually call attention to themselves.
Most of you have been educated to ignore such elements. You have been taught to seek out and identify the main ideas, dismissing the trivial as you go. This has had to be trained into you: read to a young child sometime, you will notice she has the annoying habit of interrupting the flow of the story to draw attention to some minor thing. Close reading resembles the interruptions of that child. It is a method of undoing the training that keeps us to the straight and narrow path of main ideas. It is a way of learning not to disregard those features of the text that attract our attention, but are not principal ideas.
Jane Gallop, “The Ethics of Close Reading: Close Encounters,” Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, Vol.16, No.3 (Fall 2000), pg.7-8 (x)
Plain text: (italics) I usually tell my students that “close reading” means looking at what is actually on the page, reading the text itself, rather than some idea “behind the text.” It means noticing things in the writing, things in the writing that stand out (end italics). To give you some idea of what this means, I’ve made up a list of five sorts of things that a close reading might typically notice: (1) unusual vocabulary, words that surprise either because they are unfamiliar or because they seem to belong to a different context; (2) words that seem unnecessarily repeated, as if the word keeps insisting on being written; (3) images or metaphors, especially ones that are used repeatedly and are somewhat surprising given the context; (4) what is in italics or parentheses; and (5) footnotes that seem too long. This list is far from complete—in fact, no complete list is possible—but the list is meant to begin to give you an idea of what sorts of things we notice when we’re doing close reading.
What all five of my examples have in common is that they are minor elements in the text; they are not main ideas. In fact, your usual practice of reading which focuses on main ideas would dismiss them all as marginal or trivial. Another thing they have in common is that, although they are minor, they are nonetheless conspicuous, eye-catching: they are either surprising or repeated, set off from the text or too long. (Italics) Close reading pays attention to elements in the text which, although marginal, are nonetheless emphatic, prominent—elements in the text which ought to be quietly subordinate to the main idea, but which textually call attention to themselves.
Most of you have been educated to ignore such elements. You have been taught to seek out and identify the main ideas, dismissing the trivial as you go. This has had to be trained into you: read to a young child sometime, you will notice she has the annoying habit of interrupting the flow of the story to draw attention to some minor thing. Close reading resembles the interruptions of that child. It is a method of undoing the training that keeps us to the straight and narrow path of main ideas. It is a way of learning not to disregard those features of the text that attract our attention, but are not principal ideas (end italics).
Jane Gallop, “The Ethics of Close Reading: Close Encounters,” (italics) Journal of Curriculum Theorizing (end italics), Vol.16, No.3 (Fall 2000), pg.7-8 (x)
Link from OP:
End plain text
So, continuing on in Vol. 3 of MYS, immediately following the chōka + hanka of my last post, there’s this Hitomaro poem… that is just… wow. The pathos, the immediacy of it–there’s nothing I love more than a poem that speaks across the centuries in profound ways like this one does. Of course I’m not gonna use a photo of a corpse… but I thought one of these ground-level shots from my Yongmunsan trip went will with the image here of a body, simply collapsed on the mountain path. Perhaps it’s almost the perspective of the corpse?
MYS 3:426
柿本朝臣人麻呂見香具山屍悲慟作歌一首
One verse composed by Kakinomoto no Asomi Hitomaro, as he grieved deeply upon seeing a corpse on Kaguyama
草枕 羈宿尓 誰嬬可 國忘有 家待<真>國
草枕旅の宿りに誰が嬬か国忘れたる家待たまくに
kusamakura/tabi no yadori ni/ta ga tuma ka/kuni wasuretaru/ipe matamaku ni
Grass for a pillow/stopped for lodging on his journey/whose spouse might he be?/he has forgotten his home/while his household surely awaits his return…
The first thing that strikes me here is that the kotobagaki (preface) is absolutely essential to an understanding of the poem… knowing that Hitomaro is reciting this upon seeing a corpse makes the impact here considerably more profound - he is not composing on a fellow traveler, himself, or even a stag or the like… and so when he speaks of “having forgotten his home” [”kuni wasuretaru”] and “household surely awaits him” [”ipe matamaku”], we know there is an implicit negation of the possibility of that waiting being fulfilled, that forgetting being reversed. As a fellow traveler, Hitomaro cannot help but be drawn in to sympathize - after all, journeys were truly dangerous then, and there was real possibility of death (although, to be honest, Kaguyama is right near the capital so it’s a bit of an exaggeration to think of it as a true “journey,” but Hitomaro nevertheless evokes the word “tabi,” leading into it with the makura kotoba/epithet “kusamakura” grass for a pillow; in any case, dying away from home was probably more or less considered the equivalent of dying on a journey - and the move to create a connection between himself and the corpse necessitates an appeal to the idea of “journey” as that is what they have in common - both are/were travelers along the mountain path - and in any event, the poem here thrives on the contrast between “journey” and “home” and their incongruence). Hitomaro, seeing the corpse lying in the mountains, immediately equates him with a traveler having stopped for the night, but one that can never return home - because he has forgotten his “home” (’kuni’ is essentially referring to his home village) in laying to rest here. He cannot return, and yet Hitomaro imagines those at home awaiting him in vain - and he cannot help but see the utmost tragedy and pathos in not only his having died here, alone, unable to make it home, but the lack of knowledge of that reality of the people at home, who can only continue to wait. Moreso than the corpse himself, the “ipe” [household] is cast as pitiable here, as the “mu” suffix (plus +ku to nominalize) creates the sense of speculation on Hitomaro’s behalf but also indefinite continuation, from the present into the future. This man - he must be someone’s husband [”ta ga tuma”], Hitomaro reasons, and it is that someone who is to be pitied in this situation, for she shall remain unaware of his fate, forever waiting for his return - he, having forgotten her as he laid to rest away from home.
Now, detractors like Ebersole would be sure to note here that there is more going on that Hitomaro simply empathizing with the plight of the anonymous corpse’s wife, and he would be right. There is certainly and necessarily a ritualistic aspect here - because corpses were considered polluting “kegare” - and were to be avoided at all costs - but death could simply not go unrecognized, either. And so it is perfectly reasonable to see Hitomaro’s poem as part of a ritual of placating the dead and the accompanying pollutant effect on the living of their presence - and also probably purifying the mountain, which was, after all, one of the three sacred mountains of the Asuka area/the Fujiwara capital. In other words, once noticed (見), the corpse needed to be dealt with in an appropriate manner, and this poem was probably part of that. However, the pathos infused in Hitomaro’s verse surely goes beyond mere ritual, in imagining him as not just a body but a person, who has left behind home and family in dying far away form them. This act of personifying the corpse and imagining those left behind is an astonishingly human reaction to death, one that even betrays a bit of self-insertion on the poet’s behalf, and goes above and beyond what was probably necessary for the purification of the precincts where he died. Hitomaro felt general emotion for this poor fellow, unable to make it home to die. How lonely for both he and his family - what a pathetic fate, one so illustrative of the cruel ways of the world. There may be no Buddhist message about the impermanence of human existence here yet, but there is a comparable almost existentialist subtext - where life and death alike are clearly “unfair” - having no inherent logic or reason to them. In any case, the emergence of a deep “pathos” in Japanese poetry, where the poet empathically reacts to sights and sounds of the world, can be seen here even in what may have been arguably a ritual context. Emotion and empathy are indeed also a part of ritual, but there is something about the pathos that echoes in Hitomaro’s voice here that seems fresh, even new in its moment, and moves a reader even 1300 years later to tears over this poor man’s wife who would never see her husband again, he having died by the wayside, alone, on a journey.
Reading Marauders Dynamics in SWM
By@thecat-isblogging-blog and myself
The fact that SWM happened after the werewolf prank lends an interesting colour to the dynamics we see in text.
We’d like to start with the two differing ways Remus responded to werewolf jokes. Number one:
Did you like question ten, Moony?’ asked Sirius as they emerged into the Entrance Hall.
’Loved it, said Lupin briskly. ‘Give five signs that identify the werewolf.Excellent question.’
’D'you think you managed to get all the signs?’ said James in tones of mock concern.
’Think I did,’ said Lupin seriously, as they joined the crowd thronging around the front doors eager to get out into the sunlit grounds. ’One: he’s sitting on my chair. Two: he’s wearing my clothes. Three: his name’s Remus Lupin.’
Wormtail was the only one who didn’t laugh.
To
I’m bored,’ said Sirius. 'Wish it was full moon.’
’You might,’ said Lupin darkly from behind his book. 'We’ve still got Transfiguration, if you’re bored you could test me. Here …’ and he held out his book.
In the first instance, Remus feeds into the werewolf joke and laughs at his own dry joke - and in the second instance, he reacts slightly negatively.
We know from what Remus says in HBP that he is not averse to these jokes. He laughs when Harry says fiercely, “But you are normal - you’ve just got a problem!”. Remus says in nostalgia-tinted affection, “Sometimesyou remind me a lot of James. He called it my 'furry little problem’ in company. Many people were under the impression I owned a badly behaved rabbit.”
The difference, especially given the light of what happened in the werewolf prank (James saves Snape and by extension Remus, Sirius endangers him), is the presence of James. (Reference our meta here as to understand why he sees James and Sirius as his protectors in wolf form, which James unconsciously still fulfills here)
Remus feeds into the joke when James is around, and the moment James is off doing his own thing with the snitch, Sirius’ own reference is met slightly passive aggressively. Remus is simultaneously telling Sirius his boundary is being crossed while redirecting his boredom somewhere else (hey, test me?).
[An important addition by @dragonlordette here: The dark “you might” response could be seen as Remus remembering the prank. The first joke is a joke among friends about his condition, the second one is reminder that Sirius still doesn’t truly grasp how much danger he put Remus in during the prank. Hence “you might” - like, reminders that Sirius Doesn’t Get It aren’t appreciated the way other jokes are. It serves as a marker of how Remus might feel Sirius has burned him before - he is forgiven, and still loved, but it’s not forgotten. Whereas the way he talks about James forever demonstrates that he clearly feels James never let him down.]
Cat goes further to describe Remus handing the book to Sirius as “a handout before the other person can respond to the initial negative response”. (Remus and his hyper awareness of social situations is underused in fics!)
The third werewolf reference looks very different in the light of POA:
’How thick are you, Wormtail?’ said James impatiently. 'You run round with a werewolf once a month–’
’Keep your voice down,’ implored Lupin.
Yes, Remus is reacting to his secret, but given he just made the joke about himself being a werewolf (“Three, his name is Remus Lupin”), his primary concern feels like something else. He seems more sensitive about the Animagus secret - it is the same fact he actively hides from Dumbledore in POA, manifesting in one of the worst things he did: not informing Dumbledore of that secret when he still believed Sirius to be a mass murderer.
Here is how he describes it in POA:
“All this year, I have been battling with myself, wondering whether I should tell Dumbledore that Sirius was an Animagus. But I didn’t do it. Why? Because I was too cowardly. It would have meant admitting that I’d betrayed his trust while I was at school, admitting that I’d led others along with me… and Dumbledore’s trust has meant everything to me. He let me into Hogwarts as a boy, and he gave me a job when I have been shunned all my adult life, unable to find paid work because of what I am. And so I convinced myself that Sirius was getting into the school using dark arts he learned from Voldemort, that being an Animagus had nothing to do with it..”
Moving on, it’s also interesting that when Sirius declares he is bored, both Remus and James offer ways out.
Remus asks him to test him (which he rejects), while James offers going after Snape (which he accepts). This dynamic establishes Sirius as the instigator - he begins the werewolf joke (“did you like question ten, Moony?”), he is the one who is bored which both James and Remus try to address. However, when it comes to attacking Snape, after Sirius accepts, James takes the lead whereas Sirius falls back on a supporting role.
Peter also is exclusively attached to James through the scene - cheering him on, which James enjoys and doesn’t challenge Sirius’s disparaging, “Put that away, will you. Before Wormtail wets himself in excitement.” (Peter turns pink, and James does put the snitch away with, “If it bothers you” xD)
Essentially, Sirius keeps pushing boundaries (begins werewolf joke, is bored, the prank), but it is James who sets them (joins in the first joke which makes Remus join in without any passive aggressiveness, offers the attack for boredom, and has his actions save his everyone from dire consequences in the prank).
James Potter is essentially the center of the Marauders, who is everyone’s favourite. Sirius is James’ favourite - which other two are aware of.
Never underestimate the power of a good close reading, folks.
