FORMALISM

Definition:
movement
consider
substance,
(the
criticism
theory
structural
particular
movements
Formalism
Criticism
object
they
authors’
strong
methodological
RUSSIAN
AMERICAN
group
(Viktor
Jakobson,
Tomashevsky,
Eichenbaum)
Edmund
objects
unmixed
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philosophers
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aesthetics,
which
grounded
facts
access
truth,
connotative
metaphor,
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palpability
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RUSSIAN FORMALISM
Criticism in Russia in the 19 century was moralistic in nature.
th

Russian Formalism officially began in 1919 with the founding

of Opojaz group (Petersburg Society for the study of Poetic
Language). Opojaz and the Moscow Linguistic Circle were crucial in the
rise of Russian Formalism.
THREE PERIODS OF FORMALISM

 1916 – 1921 : Focussed on the poetic language and prose

composition
 1921 – 1928 : Attempt to re-examine many literary problems
 1928 – 1935 : Decline of Russian Formalism due to historical and
political pressure under Stalin
Pioneers Of The Movement: Roman Jakobson, Victor Shklovsky and
Boris Eikhenbaum.

The influence of Russian Formalism can be seen in Structuralism.

Russian Formalism opposed many theories about literature like

biographical determinism (the claim that the life of an author determines
the type of literature that he produces).

They also opposed the claim that only those things which can be felt with
the senses and verified are real and worthy in life (positivism). Just like
the new critics they did not favour the use of historical, sociological and
other type of knowledge for interpreting literature. They never believed
that poetic language was referential in nature and did not entertain
subjective readings of works of literature. They were professed opposers
of the symbolist movement.

New criticism and Russian Formalism were both influenced by the

philosophy of Kant and shows similarities to the ideas of Coleridge who
insisted that poetry is organic (that all parts of the poem are connected
and dependent and united). Russian Formalists believed that literature
had nothing to do with life. (Their attempt was to emphasise the notion
that literature is self-sufficient).

Their subject matter was never literature, but “literariness” or the quality
of being literary. They tried to examine what techniques and devices
were present in making everyday language literary.

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For Jacobson, “Poeticity” is the state of language going beyond the

confines of referring to external reality and becoming meaningful within
the system with the help of its form.

(In Structuralism and Saussurean concepts, language does not point to

external reality. Both the signifier and the signified are psychological
concepts. The signifier “chair” and the “concept of chair” which we call
“the signified” are different from the object “chair”. This could be the
connection between formalism and structuralism.)

TWO IMPORTANT CONCEPTS

1. Deformation
Changes made to language with the help of poetic devices and artistic
elements which change the form of the language and make it
aesthetic.

Defamiliarisation
According to Russian Formalists literature makes familiar things and
happenings appear new and interesting to us.

(Coleridge and the Romantics also talked about making ordinary

experiences look extra ordinary through poetry).Therefore literature
helps people to fight the boredom and repetitiveness that they encounter
in life and helps them to find beauty in their day to day life.
Defamiliarisation is achieved through the inventive use of language,
poetic devices and techniques.
A simple example of a poetic device making ordinary language poetic is
inversion.

Ordinary language: “All his hopes were nipped in the bud”.

Poetry : “Nipped in the bud were

All his hopes”.

As the Russian Formalists believed that poetic devices and techniques

rendered literariness to literary works, they did not give much importance
to poets or poetic genius. By mastering these techniques and methods
anyone could create literature. Thus if one person did not write,
someone could eventually write it.

Thus for formalists like Victor Shklovsky the work was the sum total of its
artistic devices and the study of these devices. Thus the form is more
important than the content. The content gives pleasure only because of
the form that it is given.

“Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object is not

important”

Art as Technique : Victor Schklovsky

THEORY ON PROSE

Fabula And Syuzhet

Fabula – The story as it is in the chronological order.

Syuzhet – The order in which the story is presented in the wok of the
literature, commonly known as plot.

The Syuzhet makes the Fabula interesting and fills the reader with
curiosity to know what happens next.
In “Aspects of the Novel”, E M Foster explains that plot explains how one
incident leads to another. In prose fiction, Syuzhet defamiliarises the
story for the reader.

The concept of Fabula and Syuzhet are very familiar in the field of
narratology and fictional poetics. In order to make the story interesting
the author uses the techniques like selection, concealment (certain
aspects are not revealed to the reader), focalisation, distancing and
taking up different points of view. Wayne C Booth and Tzvetan Todorov
are two major critics who analysed prose fiction. Russian Formalists
were more interested in poetry and they believed that aspects like
rhythm, rhyme and metre converted ordinary language into poetic
language. They called these methods deviations (deviations from the
normal use of language).

Even in the case of Greek Dramas and plays of Shakespeare the focus
was on presentation rather than originality in the story. It was the novel
treatment that they gave already existing stories that made them great
writers.

Roman Jakobson insisted that the efforts to know the historical

background of a work is totally unnecessary. Russian Formalists
believed that images in poetry was not a good enough technique. It was
too direct. Images showed the reader exactly what the author wants
them to see. Therefore it was advisable to use more complex techniques
to create a novelty to the presentation of the subject matter.

The Concept Of Retardation

Retardation means the prolongation of the process of perception. If the

reader is not given direct access to the content of the work of literature,
he will be all the more interested to know it. Hence the process of
knowing what is in the poem / work of art has to be prolonged.

Rene Wellek’s criticism on Russian Formalism

Wellek says that Russian Formalism is too technical and scientific and
does not give enough important to the humane element in literature. If
the Russian Formalists believe that certain techniques can bring about
novelty in presentation, then with repeated use those methods will
become familiar to the reader and the novelty will be eventually lost.
Thus it is nonsensical to insist on novelty for long.

They presented art as something that can be created by adhering to

certain forms. They did not give any importance to the author and
focused only on the conventions of literature. Poetry is reduced to the
status of a puzzle where the reader is trying to find out what the author
has hidden in the text.

Julia Kristeva says that Russian Formalism is too mechanical in its

methods. It does not give enough importance to creativity which is vital
to literature. They claimed that by following certain linguistic and literary
techniques literariness can be created. Kristeva believed that each
individual text had its own importance in the history of literature.

Later schools of criticism discarded Russian Formalism as it did not look

at the social connection of literature and laid too much stress on the
language part of literature.

I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD – W. WORDSWORTH

A FORMALIST APPROACH
A formalist approach deals with analyzing, interpreting, or evaluating the
features of a text.
“Features” means:
- literal interpretation of the tone, theme, and style of a literary
text
- grammar and syntax
- literary devices
The formalist approach reduces the importance of a text’s historical,
biographical, and cultural context.
William Wordsworth fell in love with nature at an early age. He learned to
appreciate every little thing and to see the beauty in simplicity. In his
early childhood he was surrounded by art and literature. This may have had
an impact on his interest in writing later in life. William Wordsworth's
poems were not just part of the Romantic Period because of the era they
were written in. His poems were descriptive and detailed. They used
beautiful imagery to evoke emotions, thoughts, and feelings in their
readers. He wanted the reader to feel what he felt.
Nature in Wordsworth’s Poetry
For romantics the nature is organic, untouched, intense, and sensorial
because is not analyzed, it is perceived.
For Wordsworth nature:
- is in connection to humanity.
- is a complex issue
- cause Wordsworth to feel sad or melancholy;
So, Wordsworth uses nature in 3 ways: he says that Nature can teach us,
we
should find beauty in Nature, and we should find our joy in Nature.
LITERARY DEVICES:
"I wandered lonely as a cloud" wants to point to the first personal
pronoun"I", so the subject is the poet; the verb "wandered" is a perception
and intellectual one, so the imagination of the poet could be the action of
the poem; moreover, the adjective "lonely" indicates the solitude of the
poet, what is more, the comparison "as a cloud" affirms his loneliness.
STANZA 1
1 I wander'd lonely as a cloud
2 That floats on high o'er vale and hills,
3 When all at once I saw a crowd ,
4 A host of golden da odils:
5 Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
6 Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
STANZA 1 ANALYSIS
In the first stanza, the poet is wandering and presents us a very huge
landscape "over vales and hills", but his thoughts are interrupted by a
vision of "a crowd, a host of golden daffodils"; analyzing through the
first lines,
Simile: A comparison of two things through the use of the words “like” or
“as”.
I wander'd lonely as a cloud - The first line makes nice use of
personification and
simile. The poet assumes himself to be a cloud (simile) floating in the sky.
When Wordsworth says in the second line 'I' (poet as a cloud) look down
at the
valleys and mountains and appreciate the daffodils; it's the personification,
where an inanimate object (cloud) possesses the quality of a human
enabling
it to see the daffodils.
Metaphor: The comparison of one thing to another that does not use the
terms “like” or “as.”
Metaphor: clouds are metaphor of the poet’s feelings of isolation from the
physical world, free to wonder with his mind.
Comparison: with a cloud that suggests his immersion into the natural world
Alliteration: is the repetition of similar sounds , is applied for the word 'h', in
the
words - high and hills.
Personification: The use of human characteristics to describe animals,
things, or ideas.
Personification: Suddenly, this state of isolation is interrupted by the
appearance of these flowers that present human connotations, the
words
"crowd" and "host" in opposition to the daffodils, because they are nouns
associated to human beings. A "crowd" is associated with groups of
people,
while "host" is associated with angels, because people often refer to a
"host of angels." Coupled with the description of their angelic "golden"
color, we seem to be dealing with some very special daffodils.
"Fluttering" suggests flight, which could bring us back to the angels or even
birds or butterflies. "Dancing" is something that usually only humans do.
The daffodils are given the qualities of humans and also of some kind of
otherworldly creatures, perhaps.
Rhyming Scheme of Daffodils
The 'Da odils' has a rhyming scheme throughout the poem. Poem is
composed of
four sestet stanzas with octameter verse and alternate rhyme and a final
couplet (ababcc).
The rhyming scheme of the above stanza is ABAB
- A - cloud and crowd;
- B - hills and daffodils
- and ending with a rhyming couplet CC (C - trees and breeze).
STAZA 2
7 Continuous as the stars that shine
8 And twinkle on the milky way,
9 They stretched in never-ending line
10 Along the margin of a bay:
11 Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
12 Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
STANZA 2 ANALYSIS
Simile: In the second stanza, from line 7 to 9, daffodils like stars, it is
something endless, continuous, and large and this movement contrasts
with
the static movement of the waves in the lake.
Personification: of daffodils in line 12 "Tossing their heads in sprightly
dance".
Comparison: The comparison to stars provides new evidence that the
speaker
is trying to make us think of angels or other heavenly beings.
Like the Milky Way galaxy, the flowers are roughly concentrated in a line
that
seems to stretch as far as the eye can see ("never-ending").
Hyperbole: An excessive overstatement or conscious exaggeration of fact.
The line "Ten thousand saw I at a glance" is an exaggeration and a
hyperbole ,
describing the scene of ten thousand daffodils, all together.
"Sprightly" means happily or merrily. The word derives from "sprite,"
which
refers to the playful little spirits that people once thought inhabited
nature. "Sprites" are supernatural beings, almost like fairies.
STANZA 3
13 The waves beside them danced; but they
14 Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
15 A Poet could not but be gay,
16 In such a jocund company:
17 I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
18 What wealth the show to me had brought:
The point is that the entire scene has suddenly been invested with a joyful
human-like presence. Since waves do not bring as much joy as the
yellow
flowers, the flowers "out-did" the water with their happiness. The waves
"sparkle," which creates yet another association with the stars. Everything
seems to be gleaming and twinkling and shining and sparkling. Despite his
earlier loneliness, the speaker now can’t help but feel happy, or "gay,"
with such a beautiful vision to look at. With such joyful and carefree
("jocund") "company" to hang out with. The flowers and waves feel like
companions to him.
The repetition of "gaze" tells us that he kept looking at the flowers for a
long time. It's as if the speaker enjoys looking at these daffodils at the
time, but doesn’t realize exactly how great of a gift he has just received
with this vision.
The word "wealth" expresses a more permanent kind of happiness.
STANZA 4
14 For oft, when on my couch I lie
15 In vacant or in pensive mood,
16 They flash upon that inward eye
17 Which is the bliss of solitude;
18 And then my heart with pleasure fills,
19 And dances with the Da odils
First, he sets the scene: he often sits on his couch, kind of feeling blah
about life, with no great thoughts and sights. Sometimes his mind is empty
and "vacant," like a bored teenager sitting on the sofa after school and
trying to decide what to do. At other times he feels "pensive," which means
he thinks kind-of-sad thoughts. You can’t be both "vacant" and "pensive"
because one means "not thinking," and the other means "thinking while
feeling blue." But he groups the two experiences together because both are
vaguely unpleasant and dissatisfying.
So, often when our speaker gets in these downer moods, the image of
the
daffodils "flashes" through his mi The "inward eye" expresses what
Wordsworth felt to be a deeper, truer spiritual vision. A person cannot
share his or her own spiritual vision completely with others, and so it is
a form of "solitude." But its truth and beauty make it "blissful."
When the memory of the flowers and the lake flashes into his head, he feels
happy again. It’s almost like the same experience he had while "wandering"
through nature at the beginning of the poem, when the real daffodils pushed
the loneliness out of his head. His heart is set to dancing, just like the
flowers. He dances along "with" them – they are his cheerful
companions
once again.
Symbol Analysis The Daffodils (Dance, Dance Revolution)
In "I wandered lonely as a Cloud," the daffodils are like little yellow
people who keep the speaker company when he is feeling lonely. The
happiness of the daffodils can always cheer him up, and he can tell that
they are happy because they dance. Some variation of the word "dance"
occurs in each of the four stanzas. Also, the speaker is taken aback by how
many daffodils there are. We often think of daffodils as a flower that
people plant in their gardens in the springtime, so it would be surprising
to come upon thousands of them by an isolated lake.
 Lines 3-4: The daffodils are personified as a crowd of people. This
personification will continue throughout the poem.
 Lines 6: Daffodils cannot actually "dance," so Wordsworth is ascribing
to them an action that is associated with people.
 Line 9: The speaker says that the line of daffodils is "never-ending,"
but we know this can’t be strictly true: all good things come to an
end. This is an example of hyperbole, or exaggeration.
 Lines 12: The personification of the daffodils becomes more specific.
The "heads" of the daffodils are the part of the flower with the
petals. It is larger and heavier than the stem, and so it bobs in a
breeze. (When you think about it, it’s kind of amazing how flowers
support themselves at all.)
 Lines 13-14: The waves also get in on some of the dancing (and
personification) action, but the daffodils are not to be out-done –
they are happier than the waves.
 Lines 21-24: Wordsworth imagines the daffodils in his spiritual
vision, for which he uses the metaphor of an "inward eye." His heart
dances like a person, too.
Clouds, Sky, and Heavens
"I wandered lonely as a Cloud" has the remote, otherworldly atmosphere
that
is suggested by the title. The speaker feels like a cloud, distant and
separated from the world below. But this distance becomes a good thing
when
he comes upon the daffodils, which are like little stars. It’s as if the
problem at the beginning is that he hasn’t ascended high enough.
Lines 1-2: The beginning of the poem makes a simile between the
speaker’s wandering and the "lonely" distant movements of a single cloud.
Clouds can’t be lonely, so we have another example of personification.
Lines 7-8: The second stanza begins with a simile comparing the shape
and number of the daffodils to the band of stars that we call the Milky Way
galaxy.
Angels and Spirits
You have to read into the poem a bit, but we think that Wordsworth is
definitely trying to associate the flowers with angelic or heavenly beings.
Maybe he was thinking of Dante’s Paradiso from The Divine Comedy, in
which
all the angels and blessed souls of heaven form a big flower. However,
Wordsworth is a more naturalistic (i.e., strictly realistic) poet than
Dante, and so the imagery of angels is extremely subtle.
Line 4: You may have heard the phrase, "heavenly host" in reference to
angels or spirits. We think Wordsworth adds the word "host" in order to
suggest this connection. Also, the color of the flowers is golden like a
halo.
Line 10: Stars are associated with angels, too, so the simile comparing
the flowers to "twinkling" stars reinforces the connection.
Line 12: The word "sprightly" is derived from the word "sprite,"
meaning a local spirit, almost like a fairy.
Tone: The general atmosphere created in a story, or the author’s or
narrator’s attitude toward the story or the subject.
The main themes are: the poetic imagination that is to say the suggestion
of
a treasure is given by imagination and thoughts, endlessness linked to the
nature, a pantheistic vision of the nature, inspiration, loneliness,
happiness

New Criticism in Literature

Characteristics

 The movement derived in significant part from elements in Principles of Literary

Criticism (1924) and Practical Criticism (1929) by I.A. Richards and from the critical essays of T.S.
Eliot.

 It opposed the prevailing interest of scholars, critics, and teachers of that era in the
biographies of authors, the social context of literature, and literary history by insisting that the
proper concern of literary criticism is not with the external circumstances or effects or historical
position of a work, but with a detailed consideration of the work itself as an independent entity.

 New Criticism is distinctly formalist in character.

 The method of New Criticism focuses on a close reading of rhythm, meter, theme, imagery,
metaphor, etc.

 According to the intentional fallacy, it’s impossible to determine an author’s reasons for writing
a text without directly asking him or her.

 Intentional Fallacy, a literary term, is coined by the American New Critics W. K. Wimsatt Jr and
Monroe C. Beardsley to describe the general assumption that an author’s assumed or declared
intention in writing a work is an appropriate basis for deciding upon the meaning or value of a
work.

 Even if we did determine the author’s intentions, they don’t matter, because the text itself
carries its own value. So, even if we’re reading a book by a renowned author like Shakespeare,
we shouldn’t let the author’s reputation taint our evaluation of the text.

 The affective fallacy is a literary term that refers to the supposed error of evaluating or judging a
work on the basis of its emotional effects on a reader.
  The new critics held that work should not have to be understood relative to the responses of its
readers; its merit (and meaning) must be inherent.

 The New Critics favoured poetry over other literary forms because for them poetry is the
purest exemplification of the literary values which they upheld. Still, the techniques like close
reading and structural analysis of the works are also applied to drama, novel, and other literary
forms.

 The aesthetic qualities used by the New Critics were largely borrowed from the critical
writings of ST Coleridge. Coleridge was the first to describe poetry as a unified, organic whole
that reconciles its internal conflicts and reaches some final balance or harmony.

Examples

 Practical Criticism: a Study of Literary Judgement by IA Richard (1929).

 The Well Wrought Urn by Cleanth Brooks (1947).

 British Poetry Since 1960 by Michael Schmidt and Grevel Lindop (1972).

 Eight Contemporary Poets by Calvin Bendient (1974).

 Nine Contemporary Poets: A Critical Introduction by P.R. King (1979).

 The Force of Poetry by Christopher Ricks (1987

Notes on New Criticism

IVOR ARMSTRONG RICHARDS

 Hailed as the pioneer of New Criticism.

Poet, dramatist, speculative philosopher, psychologist, semanticist.

 He gave so much importance to the text and asked readers and critics to forget about the
history and biography behind a text.

 As a psychologist he believed that aesthetic experience helps people to coordinate impulses and
attitudes.

 He believed that it is needed for a healthy mind.

 It helped people to resolve their tensions and confusions and made them happy.

Thus it is true that Richards believed that the reader is very important for the literary work. He believed
that the poem was born in the reader. Therefore, he believed that the poem was capable of producing
multiple meanings.

 In ‘Two Uses of Language’, he talks about the referential and emotive uses of language.
Language can refer to something, but it can also induce a particular emotion in the reader.

Richards also talks about four aspects of meaning:

1. Sense- what the speaker points to, what he refers to.

 2. Feeling- the feeling that is conveyed through language.

3. Tone- indicates the attitude of the speaker to the listener.

4. Intention- what the speaker wants to convey to the listener.

Statements and Pseudo-statements

Statements are considered true if they correspond with the external reality they represent.

Pseudo-statements are found in poetry and literature and they are justified if they produce the intended
emotion or help in organizing the impulses and attitudes of the readers. Richards says that poetry has
nothing to do with external ideologies and is shaped only by the experiences of the poet.

The reader and the critic should not seek the aid of anything outside themselves to analyze the poem
that they have with them.

The poet’s success lies in transferring his experience to the reader.

For Richards, good poetry is poetry that helps a person to order/organize his impulses and attitudes.

Later, critics have discarded psychological theories about poetry. But the fact that he gave more
importance to the text rather than the external details makes him valuable to the world of literary
criticism.

His major works are ‘Principles of Literary Criticism’ and ‘Practical Criticism’.

Poetry has value if it is able to organize impulses and attitudes in human beings. But the idea of
communication is also very important in criticism.

The author does not have the intention of communicating with the audience. If he is conscious of this
end of poetry then he is an inferior writer.

The experiences of the poet when they are given a proper form will naturally give the reader the same
experience. In order to give form to his experience the poet should be familiar with the symbols that
were used in the past.

They should spontaneously come to his aid when he gives expression to his experience. If the reader has
to understand the experiences that a poet talks about the impulses that the poet had should be similar
to that of the reader.

Richard’s idea of value of literary/aesthetic work

Richards says that human beings repress 9 out of 10 impulses that they experience. This repression does
not help in stabilizing/ systematizing the impulses. They remain impulses.

Richards says that the impulses and stimuli that occur in a particular group of people are similar.

Therefore the writer is able to connect with the reader. He is able to stabilize the impulses, inhibitions
and attitudes of the reader. However Richards insists that this is never something that the artist, poet,
or writer does intentionally.

Richards even said that a stabilized and calm nervous system is the success of a good poem, work of art.
NEW CRITICISM

 Opposition to traditional forms of criticism focusing on the biography of the author and the
historical context of the text.

 They also refused to look at the sociological, economic and psychological aspects of the text.

 New Critics emphasized that the text and the text alone was sufficient.

 New Critics believed that their version of criticism was intrinsic whereas others were extrinsic,
focusing on unnecessary external details.

 New Critics warned the academic world about the danger of intentional fallacy (searching for
the intention of the author) and affective fallacy (analyzing the effect of the art on the reader.
Thus the new critics sidelined the author and the reader for the text.

 New Critics also oppose relativism (the claim that everything is relative and no truth is possible)
and impressionism (giving importance to the effect of the work on the critic).

 New Critics believed that all works produced a definite and final reading or close reading.

They search for textual elements like image, symbol, metaphor, plot, character, rhyme and meter.

These elements create an organic whole that is the poem and therefore they constitute the poem. If
something is taken away, the poem is lost. That is why new critics opposed paraphrasing.

They also insisted that the form and the content are inseparable.

They also made a clear demarcation between literary language and everyday language while ordinary
language pointed to something outside language, literary language organized itself into a self-sufficient
system which does not point to or depend on anything outside the system. It brings out the potential of
language and provides an aesthetic experience to the reader.

New Critics pointed out the presence of ironies, paradoxes, ambiguities and tensions in poetry. They
make poetry what it is. But the new critics said that good poems have certain unifying factors like myths,
images, metaphors, symbols, etc. which help the poem to retain its organic unity.

New Critics were united only by what they opposed. In actual practice, each critic focused on their
favourite linguistic aspect.

Rene Wellek’s Criticism of ‘The New Criticism’

1. They focused only on aesthetic experience and did not discuss the social function of literature –
art for life’s sake.

2. Does not give enough importance to historical content, which is essential for understanding
certain texts.

3. Scientific methods used by new critics are not suited for literature which is irrational and
subjective.

4. New Criticism is an academic discipline and does not attract common readers to literature.
Criticism from Chicago critics

1. Its methods are predetermined. It tries to categorize works into a scheme it has prepared and
does not give importance to the uniqueness of the text.

2. It closes the process of interpretation, thereby limiting the possibilities of a text.

3. Different works require different methods of interpretation. Sticking on to one particular

method is not fruitful.

Later on, most other schools of criticism discarded new criticism as its methods were obsolete,
unimaginative and repetitive.

Answering Criticism on New Critics

1. They were not opposed to historical knowledge. They tried to say that it should be subordinate
to the text.

2. It is not true that new critics tried to alienate literature from the real world. They simply pointed
out that literature has a life on its own.

3. New Critics pointed out that a union of feeling and intellect happens in poetry, such a union
helps in understanding the world fully.

4. New Critics believed that in order to understand a text properly, it had to be singled out from
other aspects and factors which surround it.

Wellek points out the importance of new critics.

1. They opposed pure objectivism (scientism) and indifferent relativism (that nothing is true and
everything is relative)

2. They also opposed valuating works of art on the basis of political ideology. Eg. Considering a
great piece of literature as bad just because it does not support a particular ideology or vice
versa.

New Criticism became popular in the US after 1940’s after the decline of liberal humanism which
considered the work of art as something that is beneficial to human life and did not give enough
attention to the beauty and strength of the work of art.

Other terms suggested for New Criticism:

Aesthetic formalism

Analytical Criticism

Walter Sutton suggests that new criticism world have benefitted literary studies more if it was more
permissive. If it encompassed the social and historical context along with formal and aesthetic aspects.

Even those schools of criticism that discard new criticism employ the method of close reading developed
by them.
Structuralism claims that the literary work gets its meaning from the greater structure it is part of.
Therefore they did not approve of the new critical method of treating works in isolation. Deconstruction
does not believe in the finite and objective reading of literary texts.

With the advent of post structuralism critics were ever more interested in the ideological leanings of the
text. They also advocated that no two readers are alike and it is impossible to keep one’s ideology at bay
when one is reading a literary text.

Reader-response theories re-established the central position of the reader in the process of literary
criticism.

Later schools of criticism also emphasized the fact that the process of interpretation goes on forever and
even the text is rewritten every day when a reader takes it up to read. After reigning supreme over the
world of literary criticism for a long term, new criticism gave way to continental (European) theories
(Saussure, Derrida, etc).