What are some books about text explication in writing?

September 24, 2010 6:42 PM

Are there any notable books / web sites dedicated to explicating close reading / text explication / explication de texte, preferably with plenty of excellent examples and accompanying analysis?
posted by zenja72 to Writing & Language (2 answers total)

More or less the paradigmatic contemporary example of this is Roland Barthes's S/Z. Something like Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity would probably also fit the bill. Or do you have something else in mind?
posted by nasreddin at 9:53 PM on September 24, 2010

The Well Wrought Urn by Cleanth Brooks is another classic example. It (along with the Empson book nasreddin mentioned) is one of the best-known works of New Criticism, which put a lot of emphasis on close reading.
posted by twirlip at 10:33 AM on September 25, 2010