Close reading and distance: between invariance and a rhetoric of embodiment

‘Close reading’ of texts has become a central activity humanities pedagogy and is carried out across different levels education through number disciplines. The analysis as part educational practice sometimes claimed to be very recent phenomenon, attendant on the formulation idea text in early 1960s (Lotman, 1964; Barthes, 1977 [1964]) and, slightly earlier, English tradition, with respect exercises ‘practical criticism’ (Richards, 1929; Empson, 1930). On other hand, close reading associated much older tradition dating back inception scriptural exegesis. While educators attempt inculcate practices active interpretation, reading's adherents advocates often recognize that procedures can ossified into routine acts identifying invariants textual functioning at expense enabling students intensify articulate more engaged relation text. In an age Big Data, statistical instrumentalization Higher Education, intimacy question. Through survey methods, research presented here sought ask what methods are used disciplines, identified reading, followed whether they common theoretical, methodological historiographical frameworks sustain these ethos might play. This article will discuss some results, not least which finding commitment feature does seem have waned last century, but neither it reconceptualised anything than cerebral exercise apprehending ‘meaning’ or developing disembodied skill. briefly contrasts findings, suggesting rhetoric embodiment, mediating demands for both distance proximity area future inquiry.