New Criticism Theory and Principles

Emergence and main concepts New criticism dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. The founder of new criticism school was the American scholar John Crowe Ransom He published a book entitled The New Criticism in which he coins the term ontological critics, referring to the reader as one who recognizes a poem (literary work) as a concrete entity. A poem can be analyzed to discover its true meaning independent of its author’s intentions or a reader’s emotional responses.

Emergence and main concepts Extrinsic analysis (examining elements outside the text to uncover its meaning) should be eliminated. The job of a critic is to discover how a poem functions as a self- contained, self-referential object. Other names: modernism, formalism, aesthetic criticism, textual criticism, ontological criticism.

The TEXT AND THE TEXT ONLY approach New critics declare an objective existence for a poem. Thus, works of literature should be approached objectively, without subjective evaluations or personal reactions. Adherents: T.S Eliot and I. A. Richard

T. S. Eliot A poet does not infuse a poem with his/her personal feelings, but in such a way that incorporates within a poem the impersonal feelings and emotions common to all humankind. Therefore, a critic should analyze the poem, not the poet. A good reader of poetry must enjoy the knowledge of literary techniques and devices. A poor untrained reader resorts to personal feelings and subjective evaluations to analyze a poem. The only way of expressing emotions is objective correlative i.e. a set of objects or ideas that awaken in the reader an emotional response without being directly stated.

I.A. Richards Practical criticism: Intricate scrutiny or close reading of a poem that leads to the identification of its self-sufficient value.

Assumptions 1. An aesthetic experience, without which a poem could not be scrutinized, leads to poetic truth. The difference between poetic and scientific truth is that the first is discernable but the second is propositional 2. A poem has its own ontological status; it has a concrete autonomous entity with its own structure. Objective theory of art: the meaning of a poem cannot be equated with its author’s feelings or a reader’s personal responses. Intentional fallacy: the belief that the meaning of a poem equals personal experiences or intentions of its author.

Assumptions 3. Extrinsic or outside-the-text information like biographical data or political contexts is irrelevant to a poem’s interpretation. 4. Affective fallacy, the belief that emotional responses of a reader to a text are important or equivalent to its meaning, has to be eliminated. 5. The meaning of a poem lies in its own structure and is identified through scrutinizing that structure.

Assumptions 7. The chief characteristic of a poem is coherence or interrelatedness at the level of theme and form, which is technically dubbed as organic unity. Organic unity: the concept that all parts of a poem are interconnected and interrelated, with each part reflecting and helping to support the main idea 8. Form and content are inseparable. A poem is a bundle of harmonized tensions and structural features. The heresy of paraphrase: the belief, erroneous for new critics, that a poem can be equated with paraphrased prose.

Methodology (Action plan) Remember! The job of a critic is to find conflicts and tensions that help to develop an ambiguity (main tension) and are eventually resolved into a harmonious whole at the level of theme and form.

Methodology (Action plan) 1. Identify the main ambiguity (main conflict). 2. Scrutinize the word choice i.e. identify denotations and connotations of a poem’s vocabulary that lead to a chief paradox or irony. 3. Identify minor tensions that help to develop the major tension. The job of a critic is to analyze the poetic diction to ascertain the minor and major tensions.

Methodology (Action plan) 4. Analyze structural and figurative elements that are interrelated to support the poem’ main tension. You should demonstrate how a poem thematically, structurally, and figuratively supports its overall meaning by reconciling all of these tensions into a unified whole. 5. Look at the rhyme scheme, meter, and other prosodic features to show how the technical elements of a text aid in formulating coherent meaning of a poem. Finally, prove that the poem is a self-referential autonomous entity.

Questions 1. Explain the concept of a read reader according to T.S. Eliot 2. Science and poetry provide different yet equally valid sources of knowledge. Comment 3. Define the following terms Intentional fallacy Objective correlative Organic unity Extrinsic analysis Affective fallacy