New Criticism was a popular form of literary criticism in the mid-20th century that focused solely on the text itself, disregarding authorial intent and biographical/historical information. Critics analyzed aspects of the text that produced ambiguity and interpreted the work based on its cohesion. The critic became the interpreter through whom literature could be understood. While New Criticism has been refuted and superseded, it remains a useful tool for teaching the basics of poetry. The new critics tended to value Western work and works written by men, but feminist and New Historical Critics restored many works to the canon that had been ousted by the New Critics.
New Criticism is a form of literary criticism that triumphed as the predominant form of criticism in the 1940s through the 1960s. John Crowe Ransom is responsible for naming him in his book of the same name, published in 1941. It quickly became “the” way to read literature and poetry, and was taught in both college and high school. The underlying idea is that the author’s intent is not important; the text itself is all that should be examined.
Literary criticism prior to this form had considered a number of ways to interpret literature, with no consensus on the best method. Some critics have evaluated literature in terms of authorship, showing how the works were representative of or differed from the time periods in which they were written. Others have evaluated the works in terms of the author’s life and background.
New Criticism differed markedly from earlier forms in that it rejected authorial intent and in particular disregarded biographical and historical information about an author. Instead, literature was to be interpreted based solely on the cohesion of the work. To a new critic, whatever the author intended was irrelevant, as the form of the work was always transforming the intent, producing new meanings.
The critic’s position was to evaluate various aspects of a text that produced ambiguity. He has analyzed metaphors, similes and other rhetorical tropes that lead to stresses and counterstresses, reconciling them to find harmony in a work. Through analysis, the critic could then tell readers how to interpret a text and what value was to be derived from reading a text. In other words, the critic became the interpreter through whom literature could be understood.
Furthermore, the text was to be regarded as an object of literature, complete in itself. If the reader has begun to extrapolate his interpretation of him outside the text, he has moved away from New Criticism. The critic should be free from his or her own feelings or emotional responses while reading the text, and only criticisms that latched onto the text were valid. Later theorists have argued that there can be no freedom from the self in textual analysis and that this desire to analyze the text as if the reader were a blank slate is quite impossible.
In their new elevated status as performers, however, the critics legitimized their profession. The publication of books and articles elucidating the meanings of poetry and other writings were cousins of literature, providing a method for the layman to understand what he read. While much of New Criticism has been roundly refuted, this new and improved status as a critic remains.
This form of criticism influenced the literary canon, the materials considered art, because critics could point to those works that achieved harmony through ambiguity. As such, some works were considered more valuable than others, greatly influencing those assigned as reading material. Students writing on such material often had their interpretations rejected because they could not find the “correct” interpretation of a text.
While the New Critique remains a useful tool for teaching students the basics of poetry, most of it has been refuted and superseded. New forms of literary criticism have triumphed, often postulating that texts can produce multiple meanings that are directly opposite. These theories reintroduced the consideration of author’s intent from a psychological or historical point of view. Other critical schools, such as structuralism, evaluate the specific language of the text to derive multiple meanings from it.
The best rebuttals have resulted in more works being included in the canon. The new critics tended to value Western work above any other form of literature and, moreover, placed a higher value on works written by men. Feminist and the New Historical Critics restored many works to the canon that had been ousted by the New Critics.
While New Criticism is no longer a dominant form of criticism, knowledge of it is essential to understanding the history of literary criticism. An outstanding text to review is The Well Wrought Urn by Cleanth Brooks. Other influential writers in this area are William Empson and Allen Tate.
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