Nombre del alumno: Aída Blat Palacios.

Título del trabajo:"New Criticism": Luz a las sombras de otros métodos de análisis
                                        literario.

Tema: "New Criticism".

Abstract:

    Tradicionalmente, la literatura ha sido estudiada como el mundo de lo inconsciente. La biografía de un autor o descifrar las posibles escondidas interpretaciones de una imagen han sido durante años -y aún lo siguen siendo- el principal objetivo de la crítica literaria, donde lo importante no parece que sea el trabajo en sí, sino todos los aspectos que le rodean.

    Durante mi escolarización, diferentes profesores de literatura trataron de convencerme sobre la importancia de las aptitudes interpretativas que debería poseer un buen crítico literario. Pero llega el momento en que esa estudiante, ya crecida, trata de demostrar que es el trabajo en sí el que puede mostrar al lector todo su contenido.

    El "New Criticism" supone un método de crítica literaria donde no es la relación del autor con su obra ("falacia intencional") ni la respuesta individual del lector ("falacia afectiva") lo más importante a la hora de entender el texto como unidad, como objetivo principal del análisis literario.

    Este trabajo pretende ser una herramienta sencilla para entender el "New Criticism" y sus diferencias con  otras tendencias en lo referente a la crítica literaria.

Autoevaluación:  Matrícula de Honor.
 
 

Año académico 1998 / 1999.
12 Marzo 1999
a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Aída Blat Palacios.
Publicacions de la Universitat de València
 

Página mantenida por:
© Copyright 1995-1999 John Slatin y Vicente Forés.
 Creada: 5/1/96 Revisada: 03/02/99
 
 

        The term New Criticism defines the criticaltheory that has dominated Anglo-American literary criticism for the past fifty years. Its method of close reading and emphasis on the text provided a corrective to fuzzy biographical criticism and subjective enthusiasm, but for many teachers in North America and Britain, it became not a method of criticism, but criticism itself. Alternatives to its interpretive strategies have until recently been regarded with deep suspicion. It is important to understan the precepts of the New Criticism as critical positions and not as the truth about literature before looking at other strategies.

        The New Criticism posits that every text is autonomous. History, biography, sociology, psychology, author's relatioship to a work is called "the intentional fallacy". Any attempt to look at the reader's individual response is called "the affective fallacy".

        New Criticism argues that each text has a central unity. The responsibility of the reader is to discover this unity. The reader's job is to interpret the text, telling in what ways each of its parts contributes to the central unity. The primary interest is in themes. A text is sapoken by a persona (narrator or speaker) who expresses an attitude which must be defined and who speaks in a tone which helps define the attitude: ironic, straightforward, or ambiguous. Judgements of the value of a text must be based on the richness of the attitude and the complexity and the balance of the text. The key phrases are ambivalence, ambiguity, tension, irony and paradox.

        The reader's analysis of these elements lead him to an examination of the themes. A work is good or bad depending on whether the themes are complex and whether or not they contribute to the central, unifying theme. The more complex the themes are and the more closely they contribute to a central theme (unity) the better the work.

        Usually, New Critics define their themes as oppositions: Life and death, good and evil, love and hate, harmony and strife, order and disorder, eternity and time, reality and appearance, truth and falsehood, emotion and reason, simplicity and complexity, nature and art. The analysis of a text is an exarcise in showing how all of its parts contribute to a complex but single (unified) statement about human problems.

        The method the reader must use is "close analysis". The reader must look at the words, the syntax, the images, the structure (usually the argument). The words must be understood to be ambiguous. The more possible meanings a word has, the richer the ambiguity. The reader should seach out irony -ambiguous meaning- and paradox -contradictory meaning, hence also as ambiguity. The reader must discover tensions in the work. These will be the results of thematic oppositions, though they may also occur as oppositions in imagery: light vs.dark, beautiful vs. ugly, graceful vs. clumsy. The oppositions may also be in the words chosen: concrete vs. abstract, energetic vs. placid.

        The reader must guard against two evils, stock responses (autumn should not make the reader sad unless the poem directs sadness at the thought of autumn) and idiosyncratic (affective) responses.

Textos Clave
Understanding Poetry     Brooks and Warren
     Seven Types of Ambiguity     William Epson
Practical Criticism    I. A. Richards
  The Well Wrought Urn  Cleanth Brooks