New Criticism & Formalism Austin, Nora, and Molly

. *Formalism and New Criticism look at how something was written, looking at the literary tools like metaphor, symbolism, and characters as opposed to the message or what the author was trying to say. Both types of criticism treat the piece of writing as something completely independent and interprets it without the inclusion of any outside information New Criticism is actually a type of Formalism. The main difference is that Formalists were originally Russian and New Critics were American.

History New Criticism became popular in the 1940’s and 50’s, as did Formalism, which began in the 20’s and reached it’s popularity in the 40’s and 50’s. It was mostly a reaction to romanticist theories that, “centered on the artist and individual creative genius, and instead placed the text itself back into the spotlight, to show how the text was indebted to forms and other works that had preceded it( Wikipedia).” Both of these methods answer questions regarding what a piece of writing has in itself, acting as a separate object, and how the writing uses tools and strategies within itself.

Pros: *close reading of the writing *learn/apply writing tools and elements such as symbolism, metaphor, imagery, irony…. *can be done without research of the writing

Cons: *The writing is out of context, which can causes it to lose meaning to the reader. *“It tends to reduce literature to little more than a collection of rhetorical devices (Aljohani).”

My Father and the Fig Tree The repetition of the mention of the fig tree brings about its importance in the poem. The final section in which the father gets the fig tree acts as the conclusion of the poem by tying it all together. The fig tree acts as a symbol of desire. “…weaving folktales like vivid little scarves.”- simile

Works Cited