The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms - Ross Murfin 2018

Thick descriptions

Thick descriptions: A term used by twentieth-century American anthropologist Clifford Geertz in The Interpretation of Cultures (1973) to refer to contextual descriptions of cultural products or events. Geertz, whose work greatly influenced contemporary literary criticism, followed British philosopher Gilbert Ryle in distinguishing between “thin” descriptions, which merely describe an action or behavior, and “thick” descriptions, which address context and meaning; for instance, “the difference, however unphotographable, between a twitch and a wink is vast” — as is the difference between a wink and a parody of the same action. The goal of thick description is to reveal the interlocking conventions or discourses that cause a production (like William Shakespeare’s Hamlet [1602]) or event (such as the coronation of Queen Elizabeth I) to have a particular meaning or meanings for people within a given culture (such as that of Renaissance England). In conducting close readings of literary works, new historicists have used thick descriptions to relate representational devices within the text to historical, economic, and symbolic (and often nonlinguistic) structures operative outside it in the culture at large.