NEW CRITICISM

NEW CRITICISM

• Emergence: New Criticism, also known as twentieth-century criticism or Chicago school, emerged in America during the 1930s.
• Prominent Critics: Key figures associated with this school include I. A. Richards, William Empson, F. R. Leavis, John Crowe Ransom, Kenneth Burke, Cleanth Brooks, Robert Penn Warren, W. K. Wimsatt, and Wayne Booth.
• Shift in Focus: Unlike earlier critics who considered external factors like the author's biography and historical context for interpreting literary texts, New Critics emphasized reading and interpreting the text itself. They believed that the text alone was sufficient to convey meaning.
• Close Reading: New Critics advocated for "Close Reading" as the primary method of interpretation. This approach involved examining the text's words, their arrangement, and line length to derive meaning.
• Contrast with Earlier Critics: Prior critics focused on questions such as the author's identity, publication history, characters, and their relation to reality. In contrast, New Critics centered their analysis on the text's meaning and form.
• Meaning and Form: New Critics believed that a poem's meaning resided in the actual words on the page, their order, and the way they were structured, including metrics and rhymes. They viewed each poem as a unique word expressing a unique experience.
• 'I' in Poetry: New Critics argued that when a poem used the pronoun 'I,' it didn't necessarily refer to the poet but to a fictional character within the poem. The poem itself was seen as a work of fiction, separate from the author's life.
• Unity of Poem: New Critics believed that a poem possessed unity and could provide meaning within itself. Different elements within the poem related to one another to create a complete meaning.
• Form and Meaning: Unlike traditional critics who studied the prevalence of specific forms (e.g., epic, sonnet) across literary periods, New Critics saw form as intimately connected to the meaning of the text. They believed that the arrangement of words contributed to a text's meaning.
• Textual Autonomy: New Critics applied the concept of "textual autonomy" to the analysis of the novel. They distinguished between the author as a biographical entity and the narrator of the story. Different types of narrators, including the omniscient, first-person, and unreliable narrators, were examined to understand their role in storytelling.