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Literary Theory and Criticism

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Literary Theory and Criticism

12 The New Criticism

  • Published: January 2006
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The New Criticism was extraordinarily influential from the end of the 1930s on into the 1950s. It is widely considered to have revolutionized the teaching of literature, to have helped in the definition of English Studies, and to have been a crucial starting-point for the development of critical theory in the second half of the twentieth century. However, it is in some respects an unusual critical theoretical movement. It is not dominated by any single critic, it has no manifesto, no clearly defined and agreed-upon starting-point, and there is no clear statement of its aims, provenance, and membership. The label that we have for it was first formally applied in 1941, in a book with that title by the American poet and critic John Crowe Ransom; yet Ransom’s book was as much about the need for a certain kind of critic as it was about identifying New Criticism. There is no typical ‘New Critic’. The critics whom Ransom examined in his 1941 book promptly rejected the label and dissociated themselves from what he was calling New Criticism, while the critics who are now usually designated New Critics were hardly mentioned by Ransom at all.

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A NOTE ON THE NEW CRITICISM

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One of the most influential movements in modern critical scholarship, the New Criticism is a philosophy of literary interpretation that stresses the importance of studying literary texts as complete works of art in themselves. Although the term New Criticism was first coined in the nineteenth century, it was not until American critic and poet John Crow Ransom, founder of the Kenyon Review wrote a book titled The New Criticism (1941) that it became established in common academic and literary usage. In essence, 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. New criticism first started as movement replacing the bio-critical and historical methods that dominated literary studies in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In these methods instead of the text itself, the biographical-historical contexts of the text were examined whereas the text is the sole evidence for interpreting it. The life and times of the author, may be of interest to the historian, but not necessarily to the critic. The text ought not to be confused with its origins:

Related papers

This isn't my work. But I found this work free to download and is really helpful. I hope this can help others who need a history of literary for their research.

This essay offers an intellectual-historical account of the emergence of modern literary criticism, that is, the mode of criticism established by T.S. Eliot and I.A. Richards in the twenties, which would go on to make the English department central to the 20thc humanities. It makes this case by arguing that the new criticism appears as a response to the invention of analytic philosophy by G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell, and steps into the shoes of that metaphysics which analytic philosophy mortally wounded.

Abstract Literary creation and criticism are two significant facets of human life. Creation is almost as old as human history and criticism is nearly as old as literature. The study of literature requires the knowledge of contexts as well as texts. What kind of person wrote the poem, the play, the fiction and the essay? What forces acted upon them as they wrote? What was the historical, the political, the economic and the cultural background? Was the writer accepting or rejecting the literary convention of time, or developing them, or creating entirely new kinds of literary expression? Are there interactions between literature and art, music or architecture of its periods? Was the writer affected by contemporaries or isolated? The present paper is an attempt to interpret the answers by the critical enquiry of classical criticism. The classicists form the foundations of contemporary theories of criticism. Key Words: I

Has the Field of Textual Criticism Changed in the Past Half-Century, 2024

“Has the Field of Textual Criticism Changed in the Past Half-Century?” in Emanuel Tov, Studies in Textual Criticism: Collected Essays, Volume 5 (Leiden: Brill, 2024), 403–24: At the end of this, my fifth, collected essays on textual studies, in a section named 'Reflections,' I devote attention to the question regarding whether the field of textual criticism has changed in the past half-century and, if so, in which ways. I do so upon special request of the editor of the series, and I do so with pleasure since the writing down of these ideas enables me to arrange my thoughts. 1 This is not a topic I have reflected on much before, but I had passing thoughts about several aspects. We must first ask ourselves whether textual criticism is a separate field.

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Vol. 5, Issue 10, Part A (2019)

New criticism.

International Journal of Applied Research

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  1. Semester 5 The New Criticism introduction

  2. DIFFERENT BETWEEN STRUCTURALISM AND OTHER OPPROACH TO LITERATURE/FORMALISM & NEW CRITICISM/READER

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  4. New Criticism |Malayalam Explanation |Notes |Criticism & Theory |Literature Miss

  5. New Criticism| Literary Theory

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  1. New Criticism Research Papers

    The aim of this research paper is to describe the history, emergence, historical background, purpose, decadence and writers of New Criticism in world literature also the rules, commonalities and principles that are common among New Critics (Followers of school of New Criticism) and also we had shed lights on the purpose of New Criticism in ...

  2. PDF ISSN Online: New criticism

    New criticism Noor Ahmad Aail and Mohammad Naeem Wisal Abstract The aim of this research paper is to describe the history, emergence, historical background, purpose, decadence and writers of New Criticism in world literature also the rules, commonalities and principles

  3. (PDF) New criticism

    2019, International Journal of Applied Research. The aim of this research paper is to describe the history, emergence, historical background, purpose, decadence and writers of New Criticism in world literature also the rules, commonalities and principles that are common among New Critics (Followers of school of New Criticism) and also we had shed lights on the purpose of New Criticism in ...

  4. PDF New Criticism: Novelties and Limitations

    The primary aim of New Criticism is to 'cleanse' the literary text from all extraneous materials that, more often than not, pervert and distort its meaning by depriving the reader of a real and direct contact with the text. The present paper purports to investigate some aspects of New Criticism as a critical approach to literature.

  5. The New Criticism

    Abstract. The New Criticism was extraordinarily influential from the end of the 1930s on into the 1950s. It is widely considered to have revolutionized the teaching of literature, to have helped in the definition of English Studies, and to have been a crucial starting-point for the development of critical theory in the second half of the twentieth century.

  6. (PDF) A NOTE ON THE NEW CRITICISM

    Additionally, theories of New Criticism elevate the role of criticism in academics—according to them, criticism is crucial to help maintain poetry and language, and in aiding their development, the New Critics Vol. 2 Issue 2 - Sep. 2016 www.researchenglish.com 136 Global English-Oriented Research Journal (G E O R J) Critical & Creative ...

  7. (PDF) New Criticism

    New Criticism. January 2008; In book: Key Concepts in Cultural Theory (pp.225-227) ... Essays in Literary and Historical Biblical Criticism ... Join ResearchGate to find the people and research ...

  8. New criticism

    Abstract The aim of this research paper is to describe the history, emergence, historical background, purpose, decadence and writers of New Criticism in world literature also the rules, commonalities and principles that are common among New Critics (Followers of school of New Criticism) and also we had shed lights on the purpose of New Criticism in poetry and prose, and the development ...

  9. PDF The Role of New Criticism in Literary Criticism

    New criticism emerged as the scientifi,c method or approach to grade the literary works accordingly. Prior to the 1920s, literary criticism was dependent on historical slant. ... Objective of article: The research paper aims to reveal out the fact that new criticism is a scientific and technical way of judging the literary work.

  10. PDF What Was New Criticism?

    objection to the New Criticism, however, has been formulated by 1 Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation and Other Essays (New York: Delta Books, 1967), p. 7. 2 Richard Poirier, The Performing Self: Compositions and Decompositions in the Languages of Contemporary Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. xv.