- \n
- Text<\/li>\n
- Context<\/li>\n
- Subtext<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
![\"Lincoln](\"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/files\/2016\/06\/Lincoln-Reading-271x300.jpg\")
A good close reading of a Lincoln document will open by drawing the reader right into the heart of Lincoln’s own text<\/strong>, usually with a snippet of quotation. \u00a0Lincoln is arguably\u00a0America’s greatest writer, certainly its greatest political writer, and so it makes sense to engage his words up front. \u00a0But a close reading should never simply turn into\u00a0a litany of quotations. \u00a0Close readers\u00a0must strive to summarize their subject’s words in a fair and compelling manner, sometimes with keywords, or short\u00a0quotations, but always through a determined, organized and thoughtful effort to explain meaning with\u00a0insightful paraphrase. \u00a0All of the close readings published at this multi-media edition\u00a0aspire first and foremost to convey\u00a0what Lincoln wrote in a manner that modern students can understand.<\/p>\nHistorians, however, just refuse to\u00a0believe that anyone can truly understand text without context<\/strong>, and so any good close reading of a Lincoln document should also provide readers with relevant historical context. \u00a0Yet relevance is such a slippery and often elusive concept. \u00a0There is no strict formula for deciding what’s relevant or not, but all good close readings of Lincoln’s writings will attempt to enhance their summary of his text with coherent (and compact) information that helps readers more fully\u00a0appreciate his intentions and, even more important, to situate the document’s significance within a broader historical narrative. Close readings must\u00a0answer those perennial questions: who, what, when, where and why. \u00a0Yet along the way, they must also overcome\u00a0the age-old “so what” threshold. \u00a0They must address significance. \u00a0Thus, good historical context requires research outside the text itself, perhaps not as extensive as for an article or research paper, but extensive nonetheless. \u00a0You should never attempt a careful close reading of a Lincoln document without examining (and citing) a variety of\u00a0primary and secondary sources.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, the purpose of all of this effort is to achieve\u00a0a greater appreciation for subtext\u00a0<\/strong>or hidden purpose.\u00a0The serious\u00a0Lincoln historian reads Lincoln’s writings closely in order to understand the strategy behind his word choices, to appreciate the mastery that often underlay his craft, but also\u00a0(at least sometimes) to expose any\u00a0mistakes or shortcomings in his approach. \u00a0Such analysis is inherently creative and subjective, prone to vigorous debate. \u00a0But the very best close readings will deliver a powerful new perspective on some element of Lincoln’s thought and career. \u00a0In other words, they will achieve the astonishing –to contribute\u00a0something new about the most analyzed figure in American history.<\/p>\n
If all this sounds daunting, it should not. \u00a0Like every other type of historical analysis, no close reading is ever perfect or even final. \u00a0Certainly, nothing at this site pretends to be so. \u00a0But here are some of the very best examples of strong close readings undertaken in recent years by Dickinson College undergraduates or by Gilder Lehrman graduate students and published at this site:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Mary Beth Donnelly, First Letter to Eliza Gurney (Understanding Lincoln, Summer 2013)<\/a><\/li>\n
- Jesse O’Neill, A Fair Match for Falstaff (Understanding Lincoln, Summer 2014)<\/a><\/li>\n
- Susan Segal, A Letter to George McClellan (Understanding Lincoln, Summer 2013)<\/a><\/li>\n
- Moyra Schauffler, Lincoln Responds to Seward (Dickinson College, Spring 2015)<\/a><\/li>\n
- Megan VanGorder, Letter to Fanny McCullough (Understanding Lincoln, Summer 2013)<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
These choices, however, represent only five\u00a0out of the more than one hundred\u00a0close readings<\/span> now published at this site and available for free educational use. \u00a0Perhaps yours will one day be part of this growing list as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Matthew Pinsker We are looking for a few good close readings at the Lincoln’s Writings website and through the Understanding Lincoln online graduate course, but what makes for a successful\u00a0close reading of a Lincoln document? \u00a0The term can\u00a0mean different things in different disciplines. But for historians, there are typically\u00a0three essential\u00a0components for analyzing written primary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4159","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4159"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4511,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4159\/revisions\/4511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
- Jesse O’Neill, A Fair Match for Falstaff (Understanding Lincoln, Summer 2014)<\/a><\/li>\n
- Mary Beth Donnelly, First Letter to Eliza Gurney (Understanding Lincoln, Summer 2013)<\/a><\/li>\n