New Criticism

NEW CRITICISM

My work is about the critical approach “New Criticism”, the North American avant-garde literary theory.

With this term, we refer to a group of new theoric proposals which born in the 30s and were stablished in the 50s. This group of theorics were looking for a new literary theory that wasn’t centred in the author’s life or the historical context to be focused in the work as an autonomy entity. We can name Allen Tate and T.S. Eliot as a representation of this movement. To this critic school is very important the conception of the literary work as an artistic object with own existence independently of external factors as the author, the reader, the historical context...which aren’t their object of study. They use the lecture method of attentive reading “close reading”. All this doesn’t mean that author’s life and historical context isn’t taking into account, it can do clearer the work, but it isn’t essential to understand the work. (Ana García Herráez, Narrative Class)

They think that a work is like an organ unit in which all parts contribute to the global mean. The New Criticism use as a methodology the “close reading”, with it we can to tackle the work as a object, we can study its parts,its intrinsic relations and leave out the external factors. (Ana García Herráez, Narrative Class). The New critics won’t build a cience of the literature with the Saussure’s materialistic linguistic model. (“Historia de la teoría de la literatura, volumen II, pág.137)

We can consider 1930 as the year of the beginning of the New criticism, although the most important works of T.S. Elliot which were more influents in the appareance of the New criticism, “Tradition and the Individual Talent” and “Hamlet and his Problems” were published in 1917 and 1919. The three books of I.A.Richards which had a great influence on the new critics, “Principles of Literary Criticism”, “Science and Poetry” and “Practical Criticism” were written in 1924, 1926 and 1929. This means that the period of New criticism is an evolution from formalism to structuralism. (“Historia de la teoría de la literatura, volumen II, pág.138)

But, who were the new critics? William Empson, Richards’ student. Their main works are “Seven Types of ambiguity” (1930) and “Some versions of Pastoral” (1932). Really, Empson was an antecedentof the new critics from the British University of Cambridge. John Crowe Ransom published in 1934 “The World’s Boy”, in 1937 “Criticism, Inc.” And in 1941 the book which gives name to the movement which we are talking about “The New Criticism”. Allen Tate, was author of “The Types of Poetry” in 1934 and of “The Angelic Imagination” and “The Simbolic Imagination”, both in 1951. Cleanth Brooks, who wrote “Modern Poetry and the Tradition” in 1939, “The Well-Wrought Urn” in 1947 and the history of literary critics, wrote with the colaboration of William K. Wimsat, “Literary Criticism: A Short Story” in 1957. Brooks wrote with the colaboration of J.T.Purser and R.P.Warren too, and they had an important influence in the north american halls of residence (colegios mayores norteamericanos): “An Approach to Literature” in 1936, “Understanding Poetry” in 1938 and “Understanding Fiction” in 1959. (“Historia de la teoría de la literatura, volumen II, pág.139-140)

A Brooks’ partner in Baton Rouge University (Lousiana) was Robert P.Warren. They found the one of the most important magazines of the New criticism: “The Southern Review”. The main works of Warren are in the book “Selected Essays”. R.P.Blackmur has as “Notes of the Language of E.E.Cummings” (1930) and “The Lion and the Honeycomb: Essays in Solicitude and Critique” (1955). Blackmur is consider the new criticism’s prototype. Yvor Winters (author of “Primitivism and Decadence” in 1937 and “Forms of Discovery” in 1967) and William K. Wimsatt (author of works very important as “The Intentional Fallacy” written in 1946 with the colaboration of Beradsley, “The Affective Fallacy”written in 1949 with Beradsley’s colaboration too and “The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry” written in 1954. And the last, Kenneth Burke, who many people don’t include in this movement, because he was in many had many ideological positions. (“Historia de la teoría de la literatura, volumen II, pág.140)

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