New Criticism

natural Criticism was a trend in literary possibility that emphasized the predominance of the literary text tonic Criticism was the preponderant trend in English and American literary criticism in the mid twentieth century, from the 1920s to the early 1960s. Its adherents were emphatic in their protagonism of close reading and attention to texts themselves, and their rejection of criticism based on extra-textual sources, oddly biography. At their best, New Critical readings were brilliant, articulately argued, and broad in scope, only if sometimes they were idiosyncratic and moralistic (Wikipedia).The emergence of New Criticism coincided with the response from literary studies to the nineteenth century philo discursive tradition and its emphases on extra-literary phenomena and biographism. Essentially, the adherents of the New Criticism crop were opposed to the interpretation of literary texts in lessen of the authors lives, stating that the literary text is a self-sufficient entity and its meaning is independent from globe in general.Also read Absolute Statement Fallacy adept of the aspects which is less known and discussed is that the primary(prenominal) theses of the New Criticism school had some affinities with Prague Structuralist Circle which was developing at the same time. Such elements as the rejection of the extra-textual in the interpretation of literature or of the authors intention are to be encountered in the studies of the Prague structuralists too. The common denominator mingled with the two schools and this explains the nature of their concentrate on is Russian Formalism, which was developed in the early twentieth century and which had a very strong impact on the critical approaches of both schools.The main theorists of New Criticism were John Crowe deliver, Allen Tate, R.P. Blackmur, Robert Penn Warren, I.A. Richards, William Empsom, Cleanth suffer, William Wimsatt, & Monroe Beardsley. It was the 1941 book by John Crowe Ranso m New Criticism that formally constituted the diverse critics into a school in its own right.The New Critics were highly prolific and, although they are by and large rejected today, their studies on literature became famous and a necessary credit in the history of literary criticism. Some of the most influential studies were Brooks The Well Wrought Urn, Empsons Seven Types of Ambiguity, Brooks and Warrens Understanding Poetry, and Richards Practical Criticism or Monroe and Beardsleys set ab fall out The Intentional Fallacy.The main elements of New Criticism wereNC sees the text as an autotelic (a word that was a NC fave) artifact it is something autonomous, written for its own sake, merged (an aspect never fully fleshed out in any logical or coherent way by the NCs) in form, & independent of the authors life, intent, etc. In fact- 3 of the major tenets of NC were 1) self-sufficiency the poesy should be independent of biography, historical content or effect on the reader which were called the Intentional, Historical & Affective fallacies. 2) unity the poem should be a coherent whole- a very traditional view, albeit limited. 3) complexity thought to be the central element of poetry. NC believed it was the readers duty to seek this out in the art.Violations of these tenets were examples of the Intentional Fallacy- that the artists intent is the primary take to be of the art (Schneider, 1).In other words, proper criticism was to avoid the troika main fallacies and focus solely on the text. Ironically, it was these main assumptions that were challenged by subsequent schools of criticism such as Reader Response or New Historicism, which argued for the importance of readership and historicity in our understanding of literature. The primacy of the text in unveiling the kernel of literature signified that the New Critics posited a direct relationship among form and meaning. Their analyses of literary texts consisted mostly of in-depth formal and structural discussions of poetical actors line and devices.For instance, William Empsons Seven Types of Ambiguity focused solely on the semantic aspect of poetry, which he could grasp by an analysis of specific poetic devices such as riddle or metaphor. Many of the New Critics statements took on an absolute value, consisting of formulations which resembled inviolable laws of literature. For example, Cleanth Brooks The Well-Wrought Urn starts with a definition of the relation between paradox and poetry as absolute Few of us are prepared to accept the statement that the language of poetry is the language of paradox (Brooks, 3). Perhaps a wiser stance towards this matter especially when it comes to finding specificity in poetry might be to argue for a poetics of differences and a more(prenominal) relativistic point of view from which to contemplate paradox in the specific context of its use.These absolute and generalizing stances towards literature were seriously challenged by many critics as reductive, eclectic and deterministic. As other critics from Reception or New Historicism schools agree shown, a trans-historical or reader-blind approach to literature cannot do justice to the literary work, nor can it account for its meaning because there is a permanent talk between literature and reality, the text and its reader and the texts significance can be redefined in these encounters.Works CitedBrooks, Cleanth. The Well-Wrought Urn. Studies in the Structure of Poetry. Harcourt, energise and World, Inc., New York, 1947.New Criticism. Wikipedia. 18.12.2006 .Schneider, Dan. New Criticism Same grey-headed Game Redux. On American Poetry Criticism & opposite Dastardly Isms. 18.12.2006 http//www.cosmoetica.com/D20-DES14.htm.