CLOSE-READING

Close-reading is the detailed and subtle analysis of the complex interrelations and 
ambiguities (multiple meanings) of the components within a work.
A text must be considered in isolation from its original referents.
It relies on "contextualism", on treating the text as " an integral and free-standing unity mainly
through a play and counterplay of evolving 'thematic imagery' and 'symbolic action'".
New criticism relies heavily on the implications of connotation and figurative language (imagery,
symbolism, simile,metaphor, paradox, hyperbole, irony) as these relate to the theme of the work,
which is regarded only as " a structure of meanings" rather than as a representative of a genre".
Style may be defined by the use of diction, syntax, imagery, rhythm and figurative devices such 
as simile, metaphor and metonymy.

Exercise:
Comment on the stylistic devices used by Charles Dichens in the passage 'Coketown' from 
'Hard Times'.
In the passage find examples of each of the following and comment upon the effectiveness
of each.
Figurative and rhetorical devices:
1.a. metaphor
1.b. effectiveness
2.a .simile
2.b. effectiveness
3.a. irony
3.b.effectiveness

Chapter V — The Key-Note
COKETOWN, to which Messrs Bounderby and Gradgrind now walked, was a triumph of fact; it had no greater taint of fancy in it than Mrs Gradgrind herself. Let us strike the key-note, Coketown, before pursuing our tune.
It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage.
It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled.
It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and tomorrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next.

Suggestions:
1. Read the text
2. Clear up any difficult words and phrases in your dictionary
3. Highlight any key words and phrases, including figures of speech and allusions
4. Find out the authorial intention (theme) of the passage
5. Prepare a report* to the class.

* Ask yourself "What is the author's purpose or intention in this passage?"
   " How does the style contribute to the meaning?"

N.B.

Per consultazione
www.online-literature.com/dickens/hardtimes