Selected Essays

Broyde, Steven J.; Mandelstam, Osip; Monas, Sidney

doi:10.2307/307539

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“…The emphasis placed on distinguishing the actual from the illusory only brings into sharper relief the degree to which these deceptively complex lines resist straightforward comprehension; Boyd might characterize them as "vivid, immediate, [and] accessible," but I am not so sure. 62 At the heart of the complexity of these lines is their ambiguous metaphoricity, which centers around the "shadow" of the opening line. Meanwhile, by virtue of the repetition of personal pronouns, the dearth of prepositions, and the use of punctuation that declines to specify the semantic relationships between clauses, it remains unclear whether one, two, or three moments in time are being described.…”

Section: VIIImentioning

confidence: 99%

Close Reading, Epistemology, and Affect: Nabokov after Rorty

Battersby¹

2020

Philosophy and Literature

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In the context of recent debates about surface reading, critical description, and symptomatic interpretation, this article argues that the work of the philosopher and literary theorist, Richard Rorty, can open up new methodological possibilities for critics concerned with theories and practices of close reading. I suggest that, though Rorty's own textual analyses routinely fail to respond to the aesthetic distinctiveness of the works he discusses, his accounts of "inspired reading" and "liberal irony" together pave the way for a more compelling critical practice. To substantiate this claim, the second half of the article offers a new reading of Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire, a novel that, perhaps more concertedly than any other, raises fundamental questions about reading and interpretation.

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Section: VIIImentioning

confidence: 99%

Close Reading, Epistemology, and Affect: Nabokov after Rorty

Battersby¹

2020

Philosophy and Literature

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Selected Essays

Cited by 1 publication

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Close Reading, Epistemology, and Affect: Nabokov after Rorty

Close Reading, Epistemology, and Affect: Nabokov after Rorty

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