NEW CRITICISM

NEW CRITICISM

Dr. S. Sreekumar

[Please refer to the earlier posts “Orientation of Critical Theories” & ‘Formalistic Approach’.]

Introduction

New Criticism is one of the Objective Theories [see M. H. Abrams in the blog]. Objective theories consider a work of art in isolation from all external references. For example, the theory suggests that one can appreciate ‘A Prayer for My Daughter’ (W. B. Yeats) without going through the biographical details of Yeats. [This will appear to be an extreme position] This theory has been rare in literary criticism. As an all-inclusive approach to poetry, it began to evolve in the late 18th and 19th centuries.

According to the Objective theory a work of Art is a self-sufficient entity. It is autonomous and can exist without any biographical/historical/social assistance. A work of Art is a heterocosm, a world of its own, independent of the world into which we are born.[Remember the fictional worlds created by R. K. Narayan and Thomas Hardy. The worlds (Malgudi & Wessex) pictured in their novels is different from the real world we live in]

New Criticism--Manifesto

·        A Poem’s objective is not to instruct or please but simply to exist.

·        A poem, as Poe expressed it, is ‘a poem ‘per se’… written solely for the poem’s sake’.

·        “Art for Art’s sake”.

·        T.S.Eliot wrote, “When we are considering poetry we must consider it primarily as poetry and not another thing”.

·        Archibald MacLeish’s aphorism “A poem should not mean But be.” [The purpose of a poem is simply to exist as a poem. Whether it has meaning or not is not very important]

New Criticism & Russian Formalism

The 1920s and 1930s were the heydays of Russian Formalism. Victor Shklovsky and Roman Jakobson were the leading lights of formalism. Later another influential critic Rene Wellek of the Prague Linguistic Circle joined the group. The movement became popular all over Europe.

Some of the assumptions of Formalism had lasting influence in the Literary Criticism of the 20^th century—

·        Literature is a specialized use of language.

·        Literary language is self- focussed—its function is not to make extrinsic references.

·        It offers a special mode of experience by drawing attention to its own ‘formal’ features.

·        The primary aim of literature is to foreground its medium.

·        By disrupting the modes of ordinary linguistic discourse, Literature tries to ‘defamiliarize’.

·        Formalism analyses a literary work as a self –contained verbal entity, independent of reference either to the state of mind of the author or to the ‘external’ world.

·        New criticism, stylistics and Narratology are related to Russian Formalism 

New Criticism was partly a reaction against the genteel [well-mannered, refined] cultivation of taste and sentiment of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century criticism. Again it was a reaction against the dominance of ‘traditional philological and antiquarian’ study of literature in the academic institutions.

The theoretical differences among the critics commonly described as New Critics -- I. A. Richards, William Empson, F. R. Leavis, Kenneth Burke, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Yvor Winters, Cleanth Brooks, R. P. Blackmur, W. K. Wimsatt, Jr., René Wellek--are sometimes so great as to leave little ground for agreement.

New Criticism made formalistic study more methodical. The New Critics originally came together in Vanderbilt University in the years following the First World War. Their leader was a teacher-scholar-poet, John Crowe Ransom who had several bright students – Allen Tate, R.P. Warren, and Cleanth Brooks. At first they adopted the name Fugitives and published a literary magazine called The Fugitive. They got in T.S.Eliot a strong ally. Their shared ideas were the following:-

i. Literature is an organic tradition,

ii. Strict attention to form is important.,

iii. Conservatism is needed in classical values,

iv. The ideal society believes in order and tradition,

v. Rigorous and analytical reading of texts is necessary.

By the 1950s, New Criticism became the dominant form of criticism

New Critics – Programs and preferences

·        New Critics sought precision and structural tightness in a literary work.

·        They favored a style and tone that tended towards irony.

·        They insisted on the presence within the work of everything necessary for its analysis.

·        They insisted that what the work says and how it says   were inseparable issues.

·        They wanted to end all concerns with matters outside the work itself.

They influenced at least one generation of university students to become more careful and serious readers than they otherwise would have been.

Some of the famous books of New Criticism are:

Understanding Poetry   by  Brooks and Warren.

Understanding Fiction  by  Brooks and Warren.

Understanding Drama    by  Brooks and Heilman.

The House of Fiction   by  Caroline Gordon & Allen Tate.

Some Key concepts, Terms and Devices.

New critics popularized certain key terms and concepts which later became tools for critical analysis for generations of critics. We will deal with some of the terms, concepts, devices here.

Form & Organic Form

In the past form often meant external form. For example, when we speak about Octave and Sestet in a sonnet we are speaking about external form. But the formalist critic is only moderately interested in external form. He is more interested in Organic Form. Every part of a literary work is a unified whole. A literary work is holistic.

Texture, Image, Symbol

J. C. Ransom popularized the term ‘texture’. According to him, consistency of imagery created texture. Imagery and symbol are part of texture. New critics were very much interested in Metaphysical poetry and in Metaphysical conceit because the Metaphysical poets made maximum use of imagery and symbol. The New Critics took much delight in close analysis of imagery and metaphor.

Image

Image may be defined as ‘a word or phrase used with a different meaning from its normal one, in order to describe something in a way that produces a strong picture in the mind’. In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the letter A that Hester Prynne wears is an image in the novel that makes her character more vivid to the reader. The phrase used in Macbeth--‘over-vaulting ambition’—is another example for image.

Symbol

Many novels have two layers of meaning. The first is in the literal plot, the second in a symbolic layer in which images and objects represent abstract ideas and feelings. Using symbols allows authors to express themselves indirectly on delicate or controversial matters.

A famous use of symbolism occurs in The Great Gatsby (1925), in which Scott Fitzgerald uses a green light at the end of a dock to symbolize the difficult-to-obtain American dream of success and happiness.

Symbols are not necessarily limited to one or two easy-to-identify meanings. For example, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce uses birds symbolically. In Joyce, the symbol becomes complex with multiple levels of meaning.

·        Birds represent the concept of escape.

·        The symbol is connected to Greek Mythology where Icarus flew too near to the Sun with waxen wings and fell into the ocean as the wax melted. The story of Icarus is an archetype of man’s Satanic pride and fall.

·        The birds are also connected with the idea of beauty, imagination, religion, and sexual desire.

Interestingly, many novelists are wary of readers who search out for symbols and invest them with their own meanings. The White Whale in Melville’s Moby Dick is one such case in point. There are so many explanations attributed to the white whale that D. H. Lawrence sarcastically commented:  “Of course he (white whale) is a symbol. Of what? I doubt if even Melville knew exactly. That's the best of it.”

Fallacies

a. Intentional Fallacy

In this fallacy the critic/reader gives importance to the intentions of the writer. Wimsatt and Beardsley in The Verbal Icon says that a work must give its intentions ‘from within’. We must not go to the author for his or her intentions. Moreover, the author may not be a reliable guide. [Trust the tale, not the teller—D. H. Lawrence]

b. The affective fallacy

This fallacy is based on the effect (particularly emotional) a work has on the reader/viewer. Aristotle’s term ‘Catharsis’ is about the impact of the work on the audience. But the formalists want us to exert maximum caution in this regard. [Refer Edmund Wilson’s essay “Marxism and Literature” posted in this blog. Wilson speaks about two types of effects—short term effect and long term effect. An inexperienced reader may confuse both].

Tension, Irony, Paradox.

‘An arch stands because the force of gravity pulls all the stones down while at the same time pushing them against the keystone. Gravity counteracts itself to keep the entire arch standing’. The arch can carry great weight – just as a piece of literature might.

This aspect may be called tension. It is the resolution of opposites, often in irony and paradox.

The basic terms tension, irony and paradox are often indistinguishable. William Empson quotes a Chinese poem to illustrate how tension works:

Swiftly the years, beyond recall.

Solemn the stillness of this spring morning.

[Years, a longer unit of time, move very fast. But the spring morning which lasts for just 2 or 3 hours stands still without any movement. Irony and paradox are in-built in these lines. The lines illustrate tension in poetry. [Please look at the posting “Tension in poetry” by Allan Tate. The lines quoted from Dante is the best example for tension in poetry]

Ambiguity

This is a term popularized by William Empson. He speaks about seven types of ambiguities. Here an example for the first type of ambiguity is given:

Beauty is but a flower

Which wrinkles will devour.

Brightness falls from the air.

Queens have died young and fair.

Dust hath closed Helen’s eye. 

Empson’s analysis of the lines is innovative as well as provocative. (However, it is too lengthy to be summarized here). In the last line quoted, there is an example of ambiguity as the poet does not mention from where the dust comes. Was it from outside alone? Or was it also from inside because of the rotting of the dead body. The poet seems to tell us through this ambiguity that the body of the most beautiful woman ever lived is nothing but a carrier of worms)

Point of View.

(Will be dealt with in detail in another posting)

Different types of points of view:

First Person—I, creates a feeling of intimacy with the reader. This point of view is generally considered superior to other forms

The second person point of view— you. This is very rarely used in fiction. Through out World Literature, we get hardly a dozen examples for this point of view. To continue with this point of view puts enormous pressure on the writer. 

The third person point of view—He, She, It

This is the time-tested and most frequent strategy adopted by authors everywhere. Readers are also familiar with it from the time of their grandmother’s fire-side stories, ‘once upon a time...’.

The third person point of view may be omniscient, limited omniscient or through a narrator-agent.  The narrator himself may be reliable or unreliable.  

Along with this sometimes we come across bouncing of point of views.

The Speaker’s Voice.

In lyric poetry the tone is equal to point of view in a novel. In a lyric too there is a speaker. Possibly there is also a hearer. In Robert Browning’s “Andrea del Sarto” it is clear that Andrea is addressing a woman during a particular time of the day. But how does one explain the voice in Donne’s “Go and catch a Falling Star”? The voice here is a mixture of genial satire, sardonic humor, and mere playfulness?

Eliot’s “Tradition and Individual Talent” & New Criticism

T. S. Eliot’s essay “Tradition and Individual Talent” had a seminal influence on New Criticism. Two germinal ideas from the essay shaped both New Critical theory and practice. Eliot argued that the literature of Western Europe could be viewed as a "simultaneous order" of works (3), where the value of any new work depended on its relation to the order of the tradition. Eliot argued that the literature of Western Europe could be viewed as a "simultaneous order" of works where the value of any new work depended on its relation to the order of the tradition.

Objective Correlative

This is another term popularized by Eliot. In "Hamlet and His Problems",  Eliot suggested that the effects of poetry stem from a relation between the words of the text and events, states of mind, or experiences that offer an "objective correlative".

The term, Objective correlative, was taken from the French symbolists who argued that poetry cannot express emotions directly, but can only evoke them. Objective Correlative can be defined as ‘a set of objects, a situation, chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given , the emotion is immediately evoked’

Impersonal theory of poetry

This is another term popularized by Eliot. Eliot believed that poetry is not an expression of emotions but an escape from emotions. Poetry is not an expression of the personality of the poet but an escape from the personality. It is a continuous self surrender.

S. Sreekumar