New Criticism: Major Concepts

Methods previous to New Criticism:
extrinsic analysis--historical/biographical,
moral/philosophical (New Humanist),
impressionist critics, expressive school

New Criticism

1. "the text and the text alone" approach

2. Eliot--the poet does not infuse the poem with his or her personality and emotions, but uses language in such a way as to  incorporate within the poem the impersonal feelings and emotions common to all mankind.

    The poem is an impersonal formulation of common feelings and emotions
    e. g. objective correlative;

　

3. a poem as an autonomy--having an ontological status

　

4. intentional fallacy--a poem's meaning is nothing more than an expression of the private experiences or intention of its author v.s. the poet's mind as a catalyst, bringing together the experiences of the author's personality...into an external object and a new creation. ...the poem is about the experiences of the author that are similar to all of our experiences.

How about your own writing? Do you see your mind as a catalyst, bringing changes while itself unchanged? Do you believe in universality?

5. affective fallacy--confuses what a poem is with what it does

How do we understand a text? Where can we find the poem's meaning?

6. Since the poem itself is an artifact or objective entity, its meaning must reside within its own structure.

7. organic unity--the critic's job, ascertain the structure of the poem, to see how it operates to achieve its unity, and to discover how meaning evolves directly from the poem itself.

    --how meaning is achieved through the various and sometimes conflicting elements operating in the poem itself.

    **organic unity--all parts of a poem are interrelated and interconnected, with each part reflecting and helping to support the poem's central idea. ...allows for the  harmonization of conflicting ideas, feelings, and attitudes, ...

More about traditional approaches, please go to "Before and After New Criticism: A Summary"

(This section contains notes taken by Kate Liu from "New Criticism," Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice.   Bressler, Charles E.  Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1994: 31-44.  The italicized parts are written by Kate. )

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