New Criticism

New Criticism

New Criticism is an approach to literature, which was developed by a

group of American critics, most of whom taught at southern

universities during the years following the First World War. Like

Russian Formalism, following Boris Eikhenbaum and Victor Shklovskii,

the New Critics developed speculative positions and techniques of

reading that provide a vital complement to the literary and artistic

emergence of modernism. The New Critics wanted to avoid

impressionistic criticism, which risked being shallow and arbitrary,

and social/ historical (Marxist) approaches, which might easily be

subsumed by other disciplines. They were given their name by John

Crowe Ransom, who describes the new American formalists in his book

The New Criticism (1941). The movement took its first inspirations

from TS Eliot and IA Richards’ thoughts on criticism. The far-reaching

influence of New Criticism stems less from theoretical or programmatic

coherence than from the practical appeal of a characteristic way of

reading. The theoretical differences among the critics commonly

described as New Critics( I. A. Richards, William Empson, F. R. Leavis,

Kenneth Burke, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Yvor Winters, Cleanth

Brooks, R. P. Blackmur, W. K. Wimsatt, Jr., René Wellek,) are

sometimes so great as to leave little ground for agreement.

As much as they abhorred the new "scientism" that passed for authority

in the modern era, the New Critics believed the study of literature

could be more organized and systematic than it had been in the past.

Specifically, they believed they could isolate the object of their

work just as other "sciences" had isolat...

... middle of paper ...

... on many fronts. First, in

its insistence on excluding external evidence, New Criticism

disqualifies many possibly fruitful perspectives for understanding

texts, such as historicism, psychoanalysis, and Marxism. Since New

Criticism aims at finding one "correct" reading, it also ignores the

ambiguity of language and the active nature of the perception of

meaning described by poststructuralists. Finally, it can even be

perceived as elitist, because it excludes those readers who lack the

background for arriving at the "correct" interpretation.

However, defenders of New Criticism might remind us that this approach

is meant to deal with the poem on its own terms. While New Criticism

may not offer us a wide range of perspectives on texts, it does

attempt to deal with the text as a work of literary art and nothing

else.