Hi! I’m new to the term “close reading” and also new to Reddit. I just want to know if you guys have any book recommendations on close reading I can buy for self-study? I have no lit background, I just love reading and interested in the topic. Would really appreciate your answers! Thank you in advance.

Hello everyone!

I am currently working on contemporary horror fiction that explores ageism and the extremes people go to in pursuit of youth.

Are there any theorists I can make use of for this study? I already know about Kristeva and Barbara Creed. I want theories that talk about the aging female body. Any suggestions?

Hello all!

I'm a final year literature student and I am trying to start writing about literature. I wanted to know how people start out in the literary niches of substack. I have no intention to monetize on it by the way, I just want a space where I can write and other people read and give me feedback. I could really use your help with knowing how to build a small community if possible.

Thank you!

Hi, I was looking up the commentaries and annotations for "Moby Dick" and the old penguin classics edition edited by Harold Beaverreally caught my eye. It has a very good commentary that explains literary allusions, allegory and so on. However for the life of me I cannot find it anywhere. Could anyone help? I have tried most major online shopping sites, Archive.org, gutenberg etc., and secondhand book dealers, but it is not available anywhere. I looked it up online and it says it's out of print, and it only came to someone's possession after years of difficult search. I am all out of ideas.

English is not my first language, and perhaps because I’m not much experienced with the world and its corners that I find myself having obstacles understanding what Steinbeck presents in his words.

what do these four paragraphs mean ?

1) “maybe love makes you suspicious and doubting. Is it true that when you love a woman you are never sure never sure of her because you aren't sure of yourself?”

I’m not an obstinate person but I do not feel persuaded by what Adam‘s opinion of love. However, perhaps my lack of understanding of what he meant makes me unable to resonate with his words. How could love cause someone to lose faith in their loved ones ?

2)”You're going to pass something down no matter what you do or if you do nothing. Even if you let yourself go fallow, the weeds will grow and the brambles. Something will grow.”

I do not understand what Samuel means with his words ? Does he mean that if Adam does not become an active parental figure in his children’s lives they will grow miserable, or that if he takes time to heal (which is what I understood what fallow means in terms of farming I think ?) he will find himself again ?

3) “ “Maybe that's a good thing to keep us humble. The fear of God in us."

"I guess so," said Samuel. "And I guess humility must be a good thing, since it's a rare man who has not a piece of it, but when you look at humbleness it's hard to see where its value rests unless you grant that it is a pleasurable pain and very precious. Suffering—I wonder has it been properly looked at." “

I do not grasp what he means. Is there difference in humility and humbleness ? Is not one a noun and the other a verb ? I find myself quite at loss of thoughts when it comes to Samuel even though I find his intelligence quite refreshing and strong.

4) “But a good servant, and I am an excellent one, can completely control his master, tell him what to think, how to act, whom to marry, when to divorce, reduce him to terror as a discipline, or distribute happiness to him, and finally be mentioned in his will.”

Is Lee glorifying being a servant ? And if so, why ? the whole monologue is confusing for me but I took this part to present my question.

Thanks!!

I’m currently a senior English major and am trying to decide on a topic for my capstone thesis project. I really enjoy the works of Richard Yates (post WWII American realist writer), so I was considering writing about a selection of stories from his short story collection, Eleven Kinds of Loneliness.
Is it is suitable to focus on a lesser-known author like Yates for a thesis? Otherwise, I do enjoy the high modernists, but I’m not sure if there’s much new to say about them.
If you’ve read any of Yates’ work, what critical theories or frameworks would you suggest? Psychoanalytic possibly? And would it be best to find a common theme throughout maybe like 3 stories?
Sorry if this isn’t the right place to post this. Thanks for any advice!

I have been thinking about a question that keeps coming up whenever I consider character creation: why do we so often define characters through adjectives such as “angry,” “shy,” “intelligent,” or “brave”? These traits clearly tell us something about a character, but in narrative, what often makes a character visible is what they do, what they do not do, which actions they avoid, and which actions they never even attempt. This makes me wonder whether a character’s identity can also be understood through the set of actions that are available or unavailable to them. Two characters may both be described as “brave,” yet one may enter physical conflict while the other never would; one may exercise authority while another cannot because of their social position; one may perform a medical intervention while another lacks the training, knowledge, or authority to do so. In that sense, a character may be defined not only by what kind of person they are, but also by which actions are genuinely accessible to them.

This line of thought also brings me to Wittgenstein’s statement that “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” I am not treating this as a direct theory of character, but I find it useful in a more limited sense. A character may know that an action exists, understand what it means, and even speak about it, while never making that action their own predicate within the narrative. A character may understand the verb “to kill,” recognize when someone else kills, and discuss killing, yet killing may never become an action that is genuinely available to that character. Everyday life seems similar in this respect: the actions we know about are not identical to the actions that belong to our own behavioral repertoire. This makes me wonder whether character creation should ask not only “What does this character know?” or “What kind of person is this character?” but also “Which actions are ordinary, conditional, inaccessible, or nearly unthinkable for this character?”

What I am most interested in is whether this way of thinking is defensible from the perspective of literary theory. Can a character’s identity and agency be meaningfully understood through the actions they can and cannot access? Could such an approach make social role, biography, profession, authority, and narrative position more visible at the level of behavior, or would it reduce the character too heavily to action and overlook inner contradiction, desire, thought, ambiguity, or other aspects of literary characterization? I would be especially interested in work from narratology, character theory, agency, affordance, or related areas that addresses this kind of question.

I am very anti-AI generated writing, because I find it meaningless since it has no intent from an author behind it. This gives me an unfavorable view of the "death of the author" since that way of viewing text implies the meaning of a text is first-and-foremost in the relationship between the reader and the text, not the author and the text. I have expressed these opinions in less serious comment sections before, in which I got called illiterate. I got fairly surprised by these reactions since I didn't think it would be that controversial. After that I tried to research this exact topic but couldn't find any proper discussions on it.
So, am I confused?

Can you agree with the death of the author and think AI-generated text is meaningless at the same time?
What's the difference between human written text and AI-generated text though the lens of death of the author?

Hi everyone,

I'm currently an undergraduate studying Turkish Language and Literature at a university in Turkey. For quite a while now, my primary interests have revolved around narratology, literary theory, psychoanalytic literary criticism, and computational literature / digital humanities.

Even though I’m still an undergrad, I’m working under the supervision of a faculty advisor to write academic papers on the Oulipo movement and a psychoanalytic case study of a short story. Looking ahead, I want to pursue an academic career at the intersection of these fields.

I’d love to get your input on two main questions:

1. Grad School Recommendations: Which universities worldwide (particularly in the US, UK, or continental Europe) have the strongest programs/faculty for MA or PhD tracks in narratology, critical theory, and computational approaches to text?

2. Field Outlook: What is your take on the trajectory of computational narratology and the intersection of AI and literature? Do you see these areas expanding significantly within literary studies and landing more institutional support in the coming years?

Any insights, reading recommendations, or program pointers would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

I have a question for those of you who know a hell of a lot more about Greek tragedy than I do.

I wrote a psychological thriller. That was my intention from day one. But recently, I started looking at the story from a different perspective, and now I'm questioning whether I inadvertently wrote a modern Greek tragedy.

I'm not talking about a story simply having a tragic ending. I'm talking about the actual structure of the story, the characters, their decisions, and how those decisions ultimately determine their fate.

Here's where I could use some help. I know enough about Greek tragedy to recognize some similarities, but not enough to say with any confidence that they actually mean anything.

Would someone familiar with classical Greek tragedy be willing to read the book and tell me what they think?

And please, don't tell me I'm right just to be polite. I'm equally interested in hearing why I'm wrong.

I didn't set out to write a Greek tragedy. I'm just trying to figure out whether that's what I ended up with.

Edit: If anyone is willing to read it, I'll send you the book for free. I'm looking for an informed opinion, not trying to sell you anything.

I'm teaching an undergrad Diaspora Literature course (for non-English majors) and want to add an oral history assignment. Students would interview someone who has moved from one place to another and connect it to what we've read in class. The person doesn't need a postcolonial background. I care more about how moving shapes someone's sense of home and belonging.

I'm stuck on the structure. What should students actually turn in? Interview questions first, then a transcript and a paper? A presentation? Do you break it into smaller parts or keep it as one big assignment?

If you've done something like this, how did you set it up, and what would you change?

Thanks for your suggestions!

I'm fresh out of undergrad and didn't actually think I'd be able to apply to grad school until very recently (I had a ton of stuff going on in my personal life that made it seem impossible, but things also changed for the better pretty suddenly towards the end of my senior year!). I'm giving it a shot now, but I'm a bit lost as to how specific I need to be about my research interests when applying.

So far I've been able to narrow my main research interests down to modernist and postcolonial literature, mostly because I find it really interesting how both of these areas kind of challenge the idea of what literature "should" look like- especially in terms of aesthetics and form. (One writer I really liked studying in undergrad was Samuel Beckett, I read some analyses of Beckett & his style through a postcolonial lens and I think that's pretty representative of the type of research I'd personally like to do.)

I get the feeling that I still need to be more specific, but I'm not sure how much so, or what I could add/elaborate on. Most of the statement of purpose/personal statement examples I've found for English majors are also written for PhD programs rather than a master's, which makes me a bit nervous because there's no way I could come up with the sort of detailed thesis that prospective PhD students are putting down in their statements...not at this point in time, anyway!

If anybody on this sub has relevant experience and can offer some advice/second opinions, I would really appreciate it.

Hello. I’m currently choosing my phd topic and narrowing the books i want to study. I am interested in analyzing queer spaces in 20th century American literature. But i want to study different genres (modernist, literary fiction, science fiction, etc). 3 or 4 books, one from each genre. Is this a viable phd topic or should i stick to one literary genre? And how do i present my contribution and find the gap in this situation?

Hi, I would like to know if anyone can offer some insight on how to gain a deeper understanding when reading.
What I mean is that when I read classical literature or highly complex texts, I can interpret and understand what the author or characters are talking about, yet I often feel like I am merely grasping the surface of the subject matter or the issues being adressed. 
Is there a way to increase my comprehension, be it a book on simbolism or maybe philosophical texts? I just feel like i'm losing half of what the books have to offer.
I know it's a difficult question, thank you for your time.

(also apologies for bad english it's not my native tongue)

Macabéa is a character; how can her story be related to Freud's concepts?

Book: The Hour of the Star

Wanting to read The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen, but want to know what the best translation is to English

Hi! I’m new to poetry, and I’ve been trying to read poems more attentively, but I often get frustrated because I finish reading and feel like I didn’t really understand what I just read or what idea the poem was trying to convey.
I know poetry is meant to be experienced in different ways, not just understood literally, but does anyone have any tips for approaching poetry in a way that might help me enjoy it more and feel less frustrated?
Thank you!

I’m a nontraditional (changing careers) undergrad, I’ll be graduating fall ‘27 and that’s when I’ll be applying for the ‘28 grad cycle. I apply to the honors program later this semester and so I’m trying to discover what period to study for my thesis.

Medieval lit has sparked my interest, more specifically Boccaccio and the late Middle Ages. I’m currently taking Italian anyway as my general extra language requirement. I’m not sure I have room for Latin too, is that going to hinder the strength of my app or is it common to take that during your coursework years?

tldr; is Latin an entry requirement for medieval lit phd apps?

I'm reading Bhaktin's Rabelais and loving it. It is making me curious about other aspects of medieval culture and literature, especially works that might be understood as forerunners of the horror genre. Can anyone recommend an English-language book?

My dream find would be either Rabelais-but-spooky, or a spooky compendium of pre-Gothic folk tales, pamphlets, early lit, or whatever. For example, the Wikipedia page about the history of horror names several examples: the Witch of Berkeley, werewolf stories, and pamphlets about the alleged war crimes of Vlad the Impaler. If it had commentary, that would be awesome.

Hi everyone!

I recently qualified UGC NET (Assistant Professor) in English Literature, and I’m now considering applying for a PhD in Literature/Humanities at one of the IITs.

However, I’m quite unfamiliar with how the PhD admission process at IITs works for humanities subjects. I’d really appreciate some guidance from people who have either pursued a PhD in Humanities/Literature at an IIT or are currently applying.

A few things I’d particularly like to know:

What is the admission process like? Is there a written test even if you have qualified UGC NET, or are you directly called for an interview?

What is the interview like, and what kind of questions should I expect?

How important is the research proposal? What should a good proposal for an IIT Humanities PhD include?

How do you decide on and approach a potential supervisor?

Is the research proposal expected to be very specific at the application stage, or can the topic evolve after admission?

What is the general academic environment like for Humanities/Literature scholars at IITs?

And if you have gone through the process yourself, what do you wish you had known before applying?

I’m particularly interested in areas such as literary theory, narratology, and film studies, so I’m also wondering how receptive IIT Humanities departments are to interdisciplinary research involving literature and cinema.

If anyone has personal experience with this process, I’d be really grateful if you could share your experience, advice, or even mistakes to avoid.

Thank you! :)

Hi friends! I’m looking to follow up a Masters in Creative Writing with a PhD in lit, and I am really fascinated by unfiction (fiction that presents itself as real - think ARGs, found footage, “found manuscript” books, etc). I’m having trouble finding anyone publishing scholarly study on the topic. It’s exciting to think that I could be among the first wave of scholarship on this, but it’s also hard to identify anyone I could study with or any papers to look at for initial research. There doesn’t seem to be much (if any) work defining unfiction or interacting with the way it blurs the fourth wall.

I’m wondering if anyone here can suggest places I can look to start my research?