New Criticism

New Criticism is an Anglo-American movement that appeared after the First World War and came to prominence in the 1940s and 1950s. John Crowe Ransom is the critic who coined the term 'New Criticism' in his work The New Criticism published in 1941. First introduced in the early 20th century in America later in England.

New criticism is an approach particularly for reading poetry. It focuses on the importance of close reading without giving any consideration to socio-economic and political contexts. Text is a self-contained or self-sufficient object and capable to produce meaning. No need to connect with the external factors of the text. They rejected all 'extrinsic' approaches to poetry like historical, biographical, sociological, and promote intrinsic understanding of the poetry by emphasizing the actual 'words on the page'. According to New critics, poetry should understand based on verbal ironies, paradoxes, and ambiguities.

Whenever we read or evaluate a text we have to emphasize the following elements.

• Literary devices.
• Language.
• Techniques.
• Symbols and images.
• Verbal ironies, ambiguity, and paradox.

The following factors should not be included in the literary analysis.

• Moralistic factors.
• Readers response.
• Political context.
• Social factors.
• Cultural context.
• Biographical elements of the writer.

Major Contributors of New Criticism.

Following are the major critics who contributed to new criticism.

• I A Richards.The Principles of Literary Criticism (1924).

• William Empson. Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930).
• T S Eliot. The Tradition and the Individual Talent.

• Cleanth Brooks.
• W.K Wimsatt. The Verbal Icon (1954).
• Austin Warren. Theory of Literature (1949)
• Rene Wellek.
• Robert Penn Warren.

MAJOR TERMS AND CONCEPTS

Irony and Paradox.

Affective Fallacy.

It is a term used in contemporary criticism to describe the error or mistake of judging or evaluating a work of art in terms of result, especially the emotional impact on the reader.  The affective fallacy was the concept introduced by W K Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley. New critics say that when we evaluate any work don't consider its emotional impact on the reader, it is an error, instead, we have to concentrate only on the words on the page. Further, they say that instead of describing the emotional impact of the work, focus on literary features like irony, paradox, ambiguity, symbols, images, etc. 

New critics believed that text is a self-sufficient and self-contained object therefore no need to approach any other external factors other than text. You just need to close read the text and uncover all literary devices and linguistic elements in order to get the meaning of a text. Looking for the emotional impact of the literary text leads to an error in judgment. A notable example of affective fallacy is Aristotle's concept of Catharsis.

Intentional Fallacy.

In contemporary criticism, the intentional fallacy is the error in judgment of literary work by giving reference to the intention of its author. The term was introduced by W K Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley. They say that author's intended aims and meaning are irrelevant for the literary critic because the text is a self-sufficient one and meaning is inherent within it and no need to approach external factors like the author's intention and biographical elements. Reference to the author's intended aims and purposes or to the author's personal situation lead to harmful mistakes because that diverts our attention away from the literary text and it leads toward external factors like the author's biography, psychological condition, etc. What they emphasize is that we have to transfer critical concern to the internal or inherent value of a literary product.

Tension.

Tension is the term introduced into criticism by Allen Tate in order to designate the unity in a literary text. In the literary text, there is a resolution between the different conflicting forces like abstract and concrete, general and particular, and denotation and connotation. This resolution between different opposing forces brings unity in any literary text. The term has formed by removing prefixes of the two words, intension and extension. This concept was widely used by new critics, especially in their examination of poetry. According to Allen Tate in good poetry, there will be the presents of 'tension', whereas both intention and extension combine alike. Through the concept of tension what new critics try to say that a good poem combines both abstract and concrete, general and particular ideas in order to reach integrated unified literary work.

Conclusion.

New criticism says that if you want to get meaning you have to do a close reading without giving any consideration to external elements like socio-economical, biographical, moralistic, and political factors.  Instead of that, we have to emphasize formalistic elements like the structure of language, images, symbols, techniques, and literary devices.

RELATED LINKS:

Literary Theory.

What is Paradox?