Module 5

New Criticism I

The Birth of New Criticism

New Criticism was a formalist movement in literary theory that dominated American literary

criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of

poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned as a self-contained, self-referential

aesthetic object. The movement derived its name from John Crowe Ransom’s book The New

Criticism (1941). New Critics believed the structure and meaning of the text were intimately

connected and should not be analyzed separately. In order to bring the focus of literary studies

back to analysis of the texts, they aimed to exclude the reader’s response, the author’s intention,

historical and cultural contexts, and moralistic bias from their analysis.

Studying a passage of prose or poetry in New Critical style required careful, exacting scrutiny of

the passage itself. Formal elements such as rhyme, meter, setting, characterization, and plot were

used to identify the theme of the text. In addition to the theme, the New Critics also looked for

paradox, ambiguity, irony, and tension to help establish the single best and most unified

interpretation of the text.

New Criticism developed as a reaction to the older philological and literary history schools of the

US North, which, influenced by nineteenth-century German scholarship, focused on the history

and meaning of individual words and their relation to foreign and ancient languages, comparative

sources, and the biographical circumstances of the authors. These approaches, it was felt, tended

to distract from the text and meaning of a poem and entirely neglect its aesthetic qualities in
favor of teaching about external factors. On the other hand, the literary appreciation school,

which limited itself to pointing out the “beauties” and morally elevating qualities of the text, was

disparaged by the New Critics as too subjective and emotional. Condemning this as a version of

Romanticism, they aimed for newer, systematic and objective method

Prior to the 1920s, literary criticism took a largely historical slant. To understand a text, critics

often looked to its historical background and the history of the language used in the text. But in

1929, a literary critic at Cambridge by the name of Ivor Armstrong Richards published Practical

Criticism. His book reported on an experiment that involved people reading and responding to

poems without knowing who the authors were. Richards was interested in why people responded

to these poems the way they did. In 1939, Richards began teaching at Harvard and influenced a

new American literary theory. Two years later, John Crowe Ransom, an English professor at

Kenyon College, published New Criticism. The new book’s title was applied to this young

method of examining texts. New Criticism went on to become a popular method of literary

analysis throughout the middle of the 20th century.

The New Critics

The primary technique employed in the New Critical approach is close analytic reading of the

text, a technique as old as Aristotle’s Poetics. The New Critics, however, introduced refinements

into the method. Early seminal works in the tradition were those of the English critics I.A.

Richards (Practical Criticism, 1929) and William Empson (Seven Types of Ambiguity, 1930).

English poet T.S. Eliot also made contributions, with his critical essays “Tradition and the

Individual Talent” (1917) and “Hamlet and His Problems” (1919). The movement did not have a

name, however, until the appearance of John Crowe Ransom’s The New Criticism (1941), a work
that loosely organized the principles of this basically linguistic approach to literature. Other

figures associated with New Criticism include Cleanth Brooks, R.P. Blackmur, Robert Penn

Warren, and W.K. Wimsatt, Jr., although their critical pronouncements, along with those of

Ransom, Richards, and Empson, are somewhat diverse and do not readily constitute a uniform

school of thought. New Criticism was eclipsed as the dominant mode of Anglo-American literary

criticism by the 1970s.

The New Critics were reacting against established trends in American criticism, arguing for the

primacy of the literary text instead of focusing on interpretations based on context. However, as

René Wellek has noted in various essays detailing the principles of New Criticism, proponents of

this theory had many differences among them, and beyond the importance the New Critics

afforded the literary text itself, there were many differences in the way they approached critical

study of literary texts. Wellek writes that among the growing number of New Critics in the

1930s, there were few that could be easily grouped together. For example, he puts Ransom,

Allen Tate, Cleanth Brooks, and Robert Penn Warren among the leaders of what he calls the

“Southern Critics.” Mostly, they are grouped together due to their reaction against previously

established schools of criticism, such as impressionist criticism, the humanist movement, the

naturalist movement, and the Marxists, and the fact that many of them taught at Southern

universities at the time they created the theory of New Criticism. In addition to rallying against

traditional modes of literary interpretations, the most significant contribution made by the New

Critics, according to Wellek, was the success with which they established criticism itself as a

major academic discipline.

In overcoming the Biographical and Traditional Historical criticism and replacing the extra-text

materials with internal references to the text itself, New Criticism had to face “the authorial

intention”. Traditional readers and critics believed that there is always an idea (or intention)

behind every literary work which its author had in his mind, before writing. This is the reason he

has written the book; to communicate it, implicitly or explicitly, with us. That’s why they studied

the author’s biography, his life and time.

But New Criticism rejected the authorial intention, by pointing out the intentional fallacy. They

doubted if there is an authorial intention at all, when most of great authors of past are dead and

cannot come to tell us how their books are supposed to be read. And, based on New Criticism,

even if there is such a claim, it may be just an intentional fallacy. Too many times an author

wants to say something, but the result is different and it is possible if the poet is not aware of the

intention of his poem at the first stage. Therefore, whatever an author says about his work is just

an interpretation of it, like many other interpretations by its readers. When it is not supported by

the text, it is not valuable.

New Critics also rejected any personal interpretation by referring it to the affective fallacy,

which is an understanding or interpretation of a text, based on personal feelings, understanding

or experiences which cannot be supported by the text. New Criticism admits that different

readers may have different interpretations based on their personal backgrounds, but such an

interpretation is not universally acceptable, and is not the true interpretation of the text. It may be

suitable for a particular critic, but is not for others. It is made by a personal reading of a text, and

contrasts the universal theme of it. New Critics claimed that the text itself is the only source or
evidence that a critic should focus on. As a result, New Criticism stated that the text is our sole

evidence or reference, not the author’s claim and the only important materials are the printed

words on the page. Based on fundamental principles of New Criticism, in order to find the

universal theme of the text, a critic should avoid his subjective personal interpretations, called

affective fallacy.

On the other hand, New Criticism never fully ignored the reader’s response or the author’s

intention. They rejected the judgment or the criticism solely based on these interpretations. In a

New Critic analysis of a literary text, any interpretation which may help to find or develop the

connection between the formal elements of the text and its theme is welcomed. Therefore a New

Critic may concern about the authorial intention, but just as much as he concerns about other

interpretations.

The Basic Tenets

There are a few basic tenets to which all New Critics subscribe despite their individual

differences. These basic doctrines and principles may be summarised as follows:

1. To the New Critics, a poem, or a work of art, is the thing in itself, and the critic must

concentrate all attention on it. The function of the critic is to analyse, interpret and evaluate a

work of art. A poem is distinct from the poet and his social milieu; it is a definite entity in itself

and must be studied as such. The critic must devote himself to close textual study, unhampered

by any extraneous concerns.

2.  Moral and religious considerations, social, political and environmental conditions, the details

of the poet’s biography, are all irrelevant and are all obstacles in the way of a real understanding
of a work of literature. The literary critic must rid himself of all such extrinsic bias and

prejudices. He must approach the work with an open mind, ready to study it, “as itself.”

3.  The critic must not allow himself to be hampered and prejudiced by any literary theories.

4. A poem has both form and content and both should be closely studied and analysed before a

true understanding of its meaning becomes possible.

5.  Words, images, rhythm, metre, etc., constitute the form of poetry and are to be closely

studied. A poem is an organic whole and these different parts are inter-connected and these inter-

connections, the reaction of one upon the other, and upon the total meaning, is to be closely

followed, and examined. That is why a prose paraphrase cannot convey the total,

and poetic, meaning of a poem.

6.  The study of words, their arrangement, the way in which they act and react on each other is

all important. Words, besides their literal significance, also have emotional, associative, and

symbolic significance, and only close application and analysis can bring out their total meaning.

The New Critics, in their minute scrutiny of words, and the structure of poetry, have propounded

different theories. From I. A. Richard’s concept of the ‘behaviour’ of words, through Empson’s

seven categories of “ambiguity” with their subdivisions, to John Crowe Ransom’s principle of

‘texture’ of Robert Penn Warren’s preoccupation with symbols, or Allen Tate’s theory of

‘tensions’, we find the same search for the meaning of words, for the strange transformation they

undergo as they react on one another for the way they contribute to build up the structure of the

poem— the unified whole of which they are the parts.

7. Poetry is communication and language is the means of communication, so the New Critics

seek to understand the full meaning of a poem through a study of poetic language. Thus, for the
New Critics words are all important, and their study is the only key to the poetic meaning of the

poem.

8. The New Critics are opposed both to the historical and comparative methods of criticism.

Historical considerations are extraneous to the work of literature, and comparison of works of art

is to be resorted to with great caution and in rare instances alone for the intent and aim of writers

differ, and so their method, their techniques, their forms, are bound to be different.

9. They are also anti-impressionistic. Instead of giving merely his impression, which are bound

to be vague and subjective, the critic must make a close, objective and precise study of the poem

concerned.

10. In short, they concentrate on close textual study, on the study of the form, design and texture

of poetry. The psychological state of the poet at the time of creation, as well as the effect of the

poem upon the readers is not to be allowed to divert attention from the text. Stressing the point,

Wimsatt and Beardsley write in their book The Verbal Icon- “A poem should not mean but be.  A

poem can be only through its meaning- since its medium is words- yet it is, simply is, in the

sense that we have no excuse for inquiring what part is intended or meant. Poetry is a feat of

style by which a complex of meaning is handled all at once.” The object of critical analysis

should be the poem itself, to approach which either by way of its origins in the mind of its maker

or by way of its results in the mind of the audience would be critical fallacies. The consequence

of both these fallacies is that the poem itself, as an object of specifically critical judgment, tends

to be ignored.
Assignment Questions

1. The Origin of New Criticism

2. New Criticism vs Traditional Criticism

3. The Key Critics

4. The Basic Principles.

Books for Reference

Abrams, M. H. and Geoffrey Galt Harpham. A Handbook of Literary Terms. Cengage

Learning, 2009.

Babu, Murukan C., editor. A Textbook of Literary Criticism and Theory. Trinity, 2014.

Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory.

Manchester University Press, 2009.

K. Nayar, Pramod. Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory: From Structuralism

to Ecocriticism. Pearson Education, 2009.

Xavier, Robin. The Methodology of Literature. Mainspring, 2015.

Web Links

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/introliterature/chapter/new-criticism-suggested-replacement/

https://www.iep.utm.edu/literary/
https://www.britannica.com/art/New-Criticism

https://www.coursehero.com/file/p54qpce/The-growing-disparity-between-scientific-and-

aesthetic-sensibility-is-in-his/

Objective Questions

1. The New Critical movement derived its name from _____________ book The New Criticism.

(John Crowe Ransom).

2. The primary technique employed in the New Critical approach is ________________ of the

text. (close reading )

3. “Hamlet and His Problems” was written by ____________________. (T.S. Eliot )

4. ______________________ claimed “a poem should not mean but be.”  (Wimsatt and

Beardsley)

5. _______________ gave the theory of ‘tensions’. (Allen Tate)

Frequently Asked Questions

1. The New Critical Movement in America

2. William Empson and the Seven Types of Ambiguty.

3. The key texts of New Criticism.

4. Affective Fallacy and Intentional Fallacy.

5. The Critics and their Contributions.

Affective Fallacy - Affective fallacy is an understanding or interpretation of a text, based on

personal feelings, understanding or experiences which cannot be supported by the text.

Authorial Intention - Traditional readers and critics believed that there is always an idea (or

intention) behind every literary work which its author had in his mind, before writing. This is the

reason he has written the book; to communicate it, implicitly or explicitly, with us. That’s why

they studied the author’s biography, his life and time.

Intentional Fallacy - Too many times an author wants to say something, but the result is

different and it is possible if the poet is not aware of the intention of his poem at the first stage.

Therefore, whatever an author says about his work is just an interpretation of it, like many other

interpretations by its readers.

Southern Critics – Wellek puts Ransom, Allen Tate, Cleanth Brooks, and Robert Penn Warren

among the leaders of what he calls the “Southern Critics.” Mostly, they are grouped together due

to their reaction against previously established schools of criticism, such as impressionist

criticism, the humanist movement, the naturalist movement, and the Marxists, and the fact that

many of them taught at Southern universities at the time they created the theory of New

Criticism.