CRITICISM, Inc. JOHN CROWE RANSOM

CRITICISM, Inc.

 JOHN CROWE RANSOM

 (Lecture notes by Dr S. Sreekumar)

 

(Revised )

Introduction

 J. C. Ransom (1888 –1974), one of the founders of the American New Criticism was a celebrated poet, critic, and a great teacher who had few equals as a companion and guide for many distinguished students like George Lanning, Robert Lowell, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, and Cleanth Brooks. The term ‘New Criticism’ (itself) originated from the title of a volume of essays— The New Criticism— published by him in 1941. The New Criticism and theory dominated American literary thought throughout the middle of the 20th century, and the method of close reading introduced by the New Critics continues to be relevant in literary studies/criticism even today.  

 

‘Criticism Inc.’ (1937) is an important document in the history of literary criticism [like the Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1801)], bringing together in one place all the distinctive ‘aims, attitudes, and assumptions’ of the American New Criticism. The essay envisages an ‘objective’ or ‘ontological’ (what exists) criticism that is the product of a ‘rigorous, disciplined, collaborative effort’ in the elucidation and evaluation of literary texts. Ransom believes that "criticism must become more scientific, or precise and systematic." To this end, he argues that ‘obstructive rival methods and approaches’ like impressionistic appreciation, historical approach (‘dry as dust’), linguistic scholarship, and "moral studies” should not influence literary criticism. ‘Criticism, Inc.,’ along with his other theoretical essays set forth some of the guiding principles the New Critics later developed. However, his former students like Allen Tate, Cleanth Brooks, and Robert Penn Warren played a more significant role in developing many of the key concepts like close reading that later became the hallmarks of the New Criticism.

 

This preview will not be complete without mentioning a pejorative connotation of the title, ‘Criticism Inc.’  By the closing decades of the twentieth century, the ‘hyperbolic, extravagant …explosion’ (J. Hillis Miller) of the technique of close reading^@   had led to many hermeneutic eccentricities in American universities.  For many traditional scholars and critics, annoyed by the radical shifts of interpretative thought, criticism has become a sort of industry [that reminded them of Detroit auto assembly lines?]. For them, the title, ‘Criticism, Inc.’ served as a mocking catechism. [Inc. is used in commercial circles as an abbreviation for ‘incorporated’—a legal corporation]. To be fair, criticism was a ‘humane pursuit’ for Ransom, never a commercial venture.

  [^@Let us look at an extreme example: Jacques Derrida's essay, ‘Ulysses Gramophone’ devotes more than eighty pages to an interpretation of the word "yes" in James Joyce's modernist novel Ulysses.

 

‘Criticism, Inc.’ has five parts.

 

FEMININITY , NARRATIVE AND PSYCHOANALYSIS--Juliet Mitchell

FEMININITY, NARRATIVE AND PSYCHOANALYSIS
Juliet Mitchell

[ This post is an attempt to explain the essay to undergraduate students of Indian Universities. ]
Dr. S. Sreekumar

Juliet Mitchell——a brief biographical note

Juliet Mitchell was born in New Zealand in 1940. Later her family moved to London. She read English at Oxford and taught at the universities of Leeds and Reading. In the 1960s, Mitchell was actively involved in politics and was on the editorial committee of the journal, New Left Review. In 1974 she published Psychoanalysis and Feminism and subsequently trained at the institute of Psychoanalysis. At present she works as a psychoanalyst in London.

Feminism and Psychoanalysis——certain issues

THE DECONSTRUCTIVE ANGEL--M.H.ABRAMS

THE DECONSTRUCTIVE ANGEL

M.H.ABRAMS

Critical summary by Dr. S. Sreekumar for students of Indian Universities

[The PAPER is closely linked to ‘The Critic as Host’ by J. Hillis Miller, the summary of which is available in this blogspot]

M.H.Abrams——a brief biography

Meyer Howard Abrams (M.H. Abrams) was an American literary critic known for his works on English Romanticism. He was also the editor of The Norton Anthology of English Literature.  

Abrams was born on July 23, 1912, in New Jersey as the son of East European Jewish immigrants. He was the first in his family to go to college. He entered Harvard University as an undergraduate in 1930. After earning his bachelor’s degree, Abrams won a Henry Fellowship to Magdalene College, Cambridge, where his tutor was I. A. Richards. He returned to Harvard for graduate school and received a master's degree and a Ph.D.

THE CRITIC AS HOST--J. HILLIS MILLER

THE CRITIC AS HOST

J. Hillis Miller

[Critical summary and analysis by Dr. S. Sreekumar. Exclusively meant for students of Indian Universities]

J. Hillis Miller

Biographical note

Joseph Hillis Miller, Jr. (1928) is an important humanities and literature scholar. He was among the pioneers in introducing phenomenology and deconstruction to Anglo-American audience.

From 1952 to 1972, Miller taught at Johns Hopkins University. In 1972, he joined Yale University where he taught for fourteen years. At Yale, he worked alongside prominent literary critics like Paul de Man and Geoffrey Hartman, where they were collectively known as the Yale School of deconstruction¹.

The Insistence of the Letter in the Unconscious--Jacques Lacan

The Insistence of the Letter in the Unconscious

Summary of the essay—Lecture notes by S. Sreekumar

                       PART II

“The Insistence of the letter in the Unconscious” was originally delivered as a lecture at the Sorbonne in 1957.

David Lodge writes about the apparent difficulty of understanding Lacan thus:

“Lacan was a notoriously, wilfully difficult writer, and the present editor (Lodge himself) certainly does not claim fully to understand everything in this essay. The algebraic formulae for metaphor and metonymy, for instance, seem designed to mystify and intimidate rather than to shed light.”

Summary of the essay