2. New Criticism era ( 1940 – 1960)
• It appeared as a reaction toward Biographical and Traditional
Historical criticism, which was focused on extra-text materials,
such as the biography of the author.
Name given to a style of criticism advocated by a group of a
cademics writing in the first half of the 20th
century.
Origin
The New Criticism is a type of formalist literary criticism that
reached its height during the 1940 s and 1950s and that
received its name from John Crowe Ransom’s 1941 book The
New Criticism.
3. We discuss new criticism into 2 ways
New Criticism
As a literary
theory
As a way to
Reading text
5. IA Richard's Practical Criticism: A Study of
Literary Judgement (1929).
Cleanth Brooks's The Well Wrought Urn (1947).
Michael Schmidt and Grevel Lindop‘ s British
Poetry Since 1960 (1972).
Calvin Bendient‘ s Eight Contemporary Poets
(1974).
P.R. King's Nine Contemporary Poets: A Critical
Introduction (1979).
Christopher Ricks‘ s The Force of Poetry (1987
6. How new criticism see a Text
Text
Complete work of
art
It example to validate
our interpretation
source to analyze and
Get true meaning
7. • Intentional fallacy, term used in 20thcentury
literary criticism to describe the
problem inherent in trying to judge a work of art
by assuming the intent or purpose of the artist
who created it.
• Affective fallacy, according to the followers
of New Criticism, the misconception that arises
from judging a poem by the emotional effect
that it produces in the reader. The concept of
affective fallacy is a direct attack on
impressionistic criticism, which argues that the
reader’s response to a poem is the ultimate
indication of its value.
8. ” Close reading “
• The only way we can know if a given
author’s intention or a given reader’s
interpretation which actually
represent the true meaning is by
carefully examine
9. • For NC, the complexity of a text is created by the multiple and
often conflicting meaning in it.
• These meaning are a product primarily of four kinds of
Linguistic devices :
-paradox -ambiguity - irony- tension
Ambiguity
• It occurs when a word, image, or event generates two or more
different meaning.
# e.g. : "Thanks for dinner. I’ve never seen potatoes cooked
like that before."
(Jonah Baldwin in the filmSleepless in Seattle , 1993)
Paradox
• It typically arise from false assumptions, which then lead to
inconsistencies between observed and expected behavior.
# e.g. : "Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy
tales again."
(C.S. Lewis to his godchild, Lucy Barfield, to whom he dedicated
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe )
10. Irony
• a figure of speech in which words are used in
such a way that their intended meaning is
different from the actual meaning of the
words.
# e.g. :
Once in the winter the rector would come to dine , and
her husband would beg her to go over the list and see
that no devorcees were included, except those who had
showed signs of penitence by being remarried to very
wealthy ( Edirth Wharton’s House of Mirth (1950)
Tension
a state of mental or emotional strain or
suspense or when there is suspense in
the story
11. How can New Criticism help us understand the text ?
• New Criticism is a powerful tool for those of us that have
problems understanding a work of literature.
• NC formulated a method of reading, a simple formula that
will help us unlock the meaning of a text
How do we discover or unlock that meaning ?
By following a simple formula
• Who is speaking in the text ?
( not the author, not the poet,
whoever/whatever created the text but it is
created by the text itself.)
• Who is being spoken to? or
• Who is the addressee? or
• Who is the implied reader of the text?
• Where is the setting ? When it is ?
• What is the central metaphors of the text ?
12. Those are called Formal Elements of a text
Image, symbols, metaphors,
rhyme, meter, point of view,
setting, characterization and
plot
13. CONCLUSION
Sometimes New Critics did believe that the text warranted a
discussion of its psychological, sociological, or philosophical
elements because those elements were obviously integral to the
work’s characterization or plot.
• New Critics also called their approach objective criticism
because their focus on each text’s own formal element ensured,
they claimed, that each text —each object being interpreted —
would itself dictate how it would be interpreted.
