1. T. S. Eliot
Modern Literature, Formalism, and
New Critics

2. Modernism
Time:
Authors:
Texts/Movements:

3. Terms and Concepts
• Objective correlation
• Dissociation of
sensibility
• Close reading
• defamiliarization
• Russian Formalism
• New Criticism
• Devices
• Modes of Operation
• Intentional Fallacy
• Affective Fallacy

4. Focus on Form
• Objective Correlation: a set of objects, a
situation, a chain of events which shall be the
formula of that particular emotion so as to
evoke that emotion when used.
• Dissociation of sensibility: a poet’s mind is
constantly amalgamating disparate experience.
Common man’s experiences are not related; to
a poet they are all part of a whole.

5. The Literary Tradition
•Poet must cultivate tradition and sacrifice
personality
•One cannot be a poet, cannot find their
own voice and moderness, if they do not
immerse themselves in the past, the
tradition.

6. Universal Truth?
•Seems to suggest that art is impersonal,
tradition writes itself. Tradition has a
perfect order that has always been, and
continues to be even after a new work is
added.
•Poet’s personality is not what he shows to
the world, but a deeper universal truth.

7. FORMALISM 1910-20
Includes Russian Formalism and New Critics in America
• Literature is not a “window on the
world” but specific literary
characteristics that make it unique
(from science).
o It is a mural or painting that “arrests the
eye”
o It may resemble reality, like looking
through glass, but devices produce this

8. Close Reading
o There is a universal truth that only Art
can lead us to.
o It rebuts scientific ideas that all can be
explained through empirical facts. Art
accesses a different kind of truth.
o “Close Reading” leads us to see the
“concrete universals”, universal truths
• Universal truth/meaning is beyond sensory
experience, thus science cannot find it.

9. • Literary language is an “act of
defamiliarization”
o Art is how we experience the artfulness of an
object
o Not a means to know, but a vision of the object
o Shklovsky calls it “roughened language” and
“disordered rhythm”
o Russian Formalism – scientific method applied to
literature
o New Critics – Anti-scientific and nonrational
• Poetry uses language connotatively, evokes
secondary meanings. Allows poetry to be both
concrete and universal, body and spirit

10. Distinguishes Devices from
Modes of Operation
Prose
• Modes of
Narration
• Manipulation of
Plot
• POV
• Chronology
• Story-telling
devices
• Sequence in
order and
duration
Poetry
• Sound in Verse
• Poetic language different
from ordinary language
• Ordinary language is
subordinate to grammar rules
and must communicate
information
• Poetic language foregrounds
literary devices
• Euphony, Rhythm, Alliteration,
Consonance, Repetition,
Rhyme
• Poetic violates rules

11. How does Poetry evolve?
• Poetry changes because
o It constantly tries to violate conventions
o It reflects the evolution of literary devices
o It must constantly defamiliarize
o ***Poetry is autonomous from historical
and social forces

12. The Fallacies
Where is Meaning? In the words and
devices
o INTENTIONAL FALLACY: meaning
does not reside in the intention of the
author
• AFFECTIVE FALLACY: meaning does
not reside in the reader’s reactions