Close Reading, Epistemology, and Affect: Nabokov after Rorty

In response to recent debates about surface reading, critical description, and symptomatic interpretation, this article argues that the philosopher and literary theorist Richard Rorty offers new methodological possibilities for critics concerned with theories and practices of close reading. I suggest that, though Rorty's own analyses fail to respond to the aesthetic distinctiveness of the works he discusses, his accounts of "inspired reading" and "liberal irony" together pave the way for a more compelling critical practice. The article substantiates this claim through a reading of Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire—a novel that powerfully raises fundamental questions about reading and interpretation.