My Guide to Literary Theory: The New Critics

"I have Jane Austen's diary at the time of writing Sense and Sensibility!"
New Critic: "Not interested."
"I have William Thackeray's annotated manuscript of Vanity Fair!"
NC: "Am I bothered though?"
"I have a time machine in which I can travel back to the early 1600s and ask Shakespeare about Hamlet!"
NC: "Talk to the hand."

This is how one can imagine a conversation with a New Critic may take place. Prior to the 20th century, literary analysis was was very much centered in a romanticist tradition which had its focus on the artist. It wanted to appreciate the intellect and the creative genius of the person who produced the text. After the turn of the century, there was a strong reaction against these old forms, that wanted to put the text back at the forefront of analysis. This movement was known as formalism, and its aim was to remove a text from the historical context of its production, and appreciate it for the value within the text itself. There were two main schools of formalism: the Russian formalists, which I will cover in the next blog, and New Criticism.

T S Eliot

The New Criticism school of theory was born out of modernism and the modernist belief that a work must provide an independent unity, cut off from the creator, at the point they withdraw from the work. This philosophy was prevalent in the writings of T S Eliot, in particular his work, "The Metaphysical Poets". In this essay, he begins to set down the standards that made a good work of poetry. Eliot believed that poetry must be complex, it must be challenging and it must be impersonal. I A Richards was also a key figure in the emergence of New Criticism. As a Pavlovian, Richards was very keen to bring a scientific basis to literature. He was interested in what human need was fulfilled by poetry. He determines that poetry provided a fantastical or imaginative fulfillment that answered needs in our psychological make up that science could not. Followed by the works of Empson and Brooks, the theory develops a universal nature; defining common processes and techniques that appeal to the human psyche, and developing the notion that good art reflects unchanging universal human issues, experiences and values.

I A Richards

The New Critics' aim was to establish a set of principals; provide a scientific basis that could be invoked to make criticism more systematic. These principals centered around meaning in the text itself and only the text itself. They were not at all interested in the poet, what the poet meant or the context of the poem's production. They believed the author's intentions were neither available, nor desirable.With such great importance placed on the text itself, the New Critics believed heavily in the importance of close reading - a very careful and methodical analysis of the text. They believed for a connotation to be of value it must contribute to the unified form of the text. A new critical approach, as is other forms of formalism, is essentially an examination of the relationship between the texts themes and its form.

If we use an apple as an analogy, prior to New Criticism it was believed to appreciate the apple you had to know that it came from this specific tree, in this specific farm, grown in these specific conditions and only then could you appreciate the apple. The New Critics said no. Once that apple is picked it is detached from all those things. They would look very closely at the apple, its colour, its texture and its taste, and say these are how the elements come together to form an exceptional apple. They claim that the intellectual payoff is not what insight it gives us into the poet or history of the text, but figuring out how the poem works to create meaning through its metaphors, irony, paradox, meter and rhyme.

Although there are aspects of New Criticism that are useful, and it is perhaps appealing to a reader to place texts on such a high pedestal, it is very easy to undermine. Is it realistic to claim that the issues Shakespeare tackles in Hamlet are of equal relevance to an English man as an African woman?  Also, if we accept these principals,
then how can literature be reactionary, progressive or political if it must balance view points and needs in a centrist balance? It is also an ineffective analysis because it is not always possible to find unity in a work, and we know that it is not true that close reading must be linked to unity.

Close Reading

New Criticism began to decline in the 60s and 70s, but it left a legacy that remains important to literary analysis today. Close reading remains a valuable tool in literary analysis and is at the heart of how we teach literature in schools. The detachment of the work from its history meant you no longer had to be a scholar, know Latin, and able to track down all of the allusions and historical background of a poem. They made it much easier to talk about and appreciate poetry for how it works intellectually and emotionally on us. All it asks of the reader is to read, and to pay attention with what is on the page. Imagine what a sterile experience your local book club would be if it was just people talking about how good Oscar Wilde, or Emily Bronte is at writing, and not what is happening in the text.