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.
