Critical Reading in Intellectual Heritage I

Critical Reading: The Fundamentals

Basic Strategies: Previewing, Annotating, Summarizing

Scholars Sylvan Barnet and Hugo Bedau discuss each of these three strategies in their
text Current Issues and Enduring Questions (see pp. 27-41).

"Previewing" is a pre-reading activity where, as Barnet and Bedau note, readers try to
learn more about the author of a text and what the title of a text might suggest (Barnet
and Bedau 27-28).

What information, for instance, can one derive from the title of Plato's The Trials of
Socrates? Or from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart"?

Previewing also involves reading forewords, introductions and prefaces. Note, for
instance, what the introduction to Homer's The Iliad tells readers about "Heroic
Society"information that is fundamental to understanding the poem (see pp. xxi-xxv).

"Annotating" involves "reading actively" and "interacting with the text" (Barnet and
Bedau 28). Consider a few of Socrates's words to the Athenian jury from Plato's Apology:

For, even if it seems ridiculous to say so, I've literally been attached to the
city, as if to a large thoroughbred horse that was somewhat sluggish
because of its size and needed to be awakened by some sort of gadfly. It's
as just such a gadfly, it seems to me, that the god has attached me to the
cityone that awakens, persuades, and reproaches each and every one of
you and never stops alighting everywhere on you the whole day. (46)

Socrates draws an analogy between himself and a gadfly. What is a gadfly? What does it
do to horses? How is the gadfly's behavior analogous to that of Socrates? Which god is
involved?

"Summarizing," among other things, helps readers "get the gist" of a text (Barnet and
Bedau 32).

This strategy may involve freewriting about a reading assignment after the fact or
discussing the assignment after the fact, as students often do in class.

Students should also employ this skill in their own writing by contextualizing quotes.
Consider the following example (adapted from an old class exercise):

In The Iliad, Agamemnon thrives on honor symbolized by possessions. As

he states in the text, "I don't want to see the army destroyed like this. / But
I want another prize ready for me right away. / I'm not going to be the only
 Greek without a prize, / It wouldn't be right. And you all see where mine is
going." (Homer 4-5)

This quote has a couple of problems. To whom, for instance, is Agamemnon speaking?
How is the army being destroyed? Also, Agamemnon wants another prize. What
happened to the first? Where is his (current) prize going? If this information is not
already nearby in the essay, the writer has to add it in the form of summary or context:

In Book 1 of The Iliad, Agamemnon initially refuses to ransom one of his

war prizes, a woman named Chryseis, to her father. Her father, Chryses,
then prays to the god Apollo, who sends a plague upon the Greeks to force
Agamemnon's hand. As a result of the plague, Agamemnon reluctantly
agrees to give back Chryseis unransomed, but he demands another prize
from the Greek army in compensation: "I don't want to see the army
destroyed like this. / But I want another prize ready for me right away. /
I'm not going to be the only Greek without a prize, / It wouldn't be right.
And you all see where mine is going." (4-5)

What John Bean Recommends in Engaging Ideas (See pp. 137 143)

"Help Students Get the Dictionary Habit" (138).

"O mighty Enkidu, you are not sprung from my womb, / but henceforth your brood will
belong with the votaries of Gilgamesh, / the priestesses, the hierodules and the women of
the temple" (The Epic of Gilgamesh 27).2

What are votaries? Hierodules?

"To those who have cherished an affection for a faithful and sagacious dog, I need hardly
be at the trouble of explaining the nature or the intensity of the gratification thus
derivable" (Poe, "The Black Cat").1

What does the word "sagacious" mean in this context?

"Make Students Responsible for Texts Not Covered in Class" (139).

"Help Students See That All Texts Are Trying to Change Their View of Something"
(142).

Rhetorical Analyses

Consider this passage from Genesis in terms of polysyndeton, the "deliberate use of many
conjunctions" (Corbett and Connors 52). According to Edward Corbett and Robert
Connors, polysyndeton affects the rhythm of prose, producing, for instance, solemnity
(52). Consider, then, what polysyndeton adds to the following passage:
 In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth
was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a
wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, "Let
there be light"; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good;
and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day,
and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was
morning, the first day. (Gen. 1.1-5)

Notes
1
"See "votary, n.," defs. 2b and 5, Oxford English Dictionary Online, Oxford English
Dictionary, 2nd ed., 1989, Web,. See, also, "hierodule, n.," Oxford English Dictionary Online,
Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., 1989, Web.
2
See "sagacious, adj.," def. 3, Oxford English Dictionary Online, Oxford English
Dictionary, 3rd ed., 2013, Web.

Works Cited

Bean, John C. Engaging Ideas. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001.

Barnet, Sylvan, and Hugo Bedau. Current Issues and Enduring Questions. 6th ed. Boston:
Bedford/ St. Martin's, 2002.

Corbett, Edward P.J., and Robert J. Connors. Style and Statement. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999.

The Epic of Gilgamesh. Trans. Andrew George. London: Penguin, 2003.

The Holy Bible. New Revised Standard Version. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1989.

Homer. The Iliad. Trans. Stanley Lombardo. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997.

Plato. Apology. The Trials of Socrates. Trans. C.D.C. Reeve. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002. 26-61.

Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Black Cat." The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore. 21 July 2015.
Web. Date of Access. < http://www.eapoe.org/works/tales/blcatd.htm>.