NEW CRITICISM (Formalism)

Alright, back to descriptions of schools of criticism. For this entry, I’ll talk about Reader Response Theory’s direct opposite: New Criticism.

In the middle of the 20th Century the various schools of Formalism had a massive battle royal, winner take all. A faction known as “The New Critics” came in and dominated American literary criticism for decades. The New Critics took their name from a book, The New Criticism, published in 1941 by one of their members, John Crowe Ransom. They were also influenced by the critical essays of T. S. Eliot, with such snappy titles as “Tradition and the Individual Talent” and “Hamlet and His Problems.”

I’ll give the New Critics one thing, they had some interesting branding.

Once the New Critics became kings of the literary hill, they basically got everyone into looking at a work, particularly works of poetry, with an emphasis on close reading. Their agenda was to discover how a work of literature functioned as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic object. These are the guys who basically came up with the concept of the Literary Canon.

Yeah, all you geeks out there who ever had a teacher tell you that all that stuff you loved wasn’t, “real literature,” you can blame The New Critics.

Hold up.

Before you nerdrage and take to the Internet to rant about these guys, I’ll give you a slight spoiler alert… New Criticism isn’t that big a deal anymore. Also, while some New Critics use their perspective to belittle and demean works that other people love, the theory itself offers useful tools for our explorations of works of art. And not just poetry, all of it.

Before we get into the nuts and bolts of New Criticism, let’s take a look at the origin story of The New Critics.

No. There is too much. Let me sum up.

In the early part of the 20th Century, most literary criticism was heavily influenced by 19th Century German scholarship. Analysis of works focused on the history and meaning of individual words and their relation to foreign and ancient languages, comparative sources, and the biographical circumstances of the authors. While some of this can lead to interesting discussions and observations (which we’ll talk about with some other theories), The New Critics felt this perspective of seeking meaning about a work from sources outside the work distracted from the pure awesomeness of the work itself. The New Critics also rejected the Literary Appreciation school, which limited itself to discussing the beautiful and morally elevating qualities of a work. To The New Critics, this was too subjective and emotional. Rather than put up with what they considered two flawed systems, The New Critics aimed for a newer, shinier method, a systematic and objective method, for discussion of the awesomeness of a work. Well… at least the awesomeness of works upon which they chose to grant their stamp of approval.

Under the reign of The New Critics, the structure and meaning of a text were intimately connected, and in order to really understand a work, these two qualities should not be analyzed separately. In order to focus all literary studies on the work and nothing but the work, The New Critics set about excluding all other conditions that might muddy the waters. The reader’s response? Irrelevant. The author’s intention? Irrelevant. The historical and cultural context of the work and or the author? Irrelevant. Any kind of moralistic bias of any and/or all of the above? Irrelevant! Irrelevant! IRRELEVANT!

For most of the Cold War decades — the 1950 through the mid-seventies — The New Criticism dominated English classes in American high schools and colleges, largely for offering a relatively straightforward and politically uncontroversial for the teaching and learning of literature.

Remember kids, these guys came to prominence in Academia during the same time as McCarthyism. Not saying correlation is causation or anything…

Exploring works through the lens of New Criticism requires precise, exacting, almost anal-retentive levels of scrutiny. Examination of formal elements such as rhyme, meter, setting, characterization, and plots were used to identify the theme of a work. Oh, yeah, these guys were HUGE on theme. So all of you who had to find all the Da Vinci Code-like secrets the author had hidden throughout a piece in order to discover the “theme” of something you read in school, thank The New Critics. In addition to the theme, The New Critics also looked for paradox, ambiguity, irony, symbolism, metaphor, and tension to come up with the single best and most unified interpretation of the text.

In 1946 a couple of The New Critics camp, William K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley, predicted the arguments they were going to face in opposition to their belief of the text being all-important in discussions of the literary value of a piece. To preemptively cut off those counterarguments, they wrote a couple of essays defending their position, creating the Intentional Fallacy and the Affective Fallacy. “The Intentional Fallacy”, basically says an author’s intention, or “intended meaning,” for a work is (say it with me) irrelevant in the analysis of a literary work. “The Affective Fallacy”, a kind of sister essay to “The Intentional Fallacy” discounts the reader’s personal reaction to a literary work as (you know where this is going) irrelevant.
I know I’m repeating myself here a bit, but I feel it’s important to know The New Critics’ backstory, specifically so we spot when people are holding onto the principles of New Criticism during a discourse. It’s like talking to a hardcore fan of The Flash and you start asking about anything you don’t get — the answer will be, “Because Speed Force.” Same with Doctor Who, “Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey.” Star Wars, “The force.” Batman, “I’m Batman.”

Toward the end of the 20th Century, Stanley Fish (from Reader Response Theory) broke ranks from The New Criticism camp.

Currently, New Criticism no longer dominates theoretical models in American universities. I feel this is largely a good thing, as it was stifling the creative aspect of literary criticism. Any time anyone tries to codify “right” and “wrong” when it comes to experiencing art, it hurts everyone: artists, the audience, critics, everyone. I, your humble guide prefer some theoretical schools than others; however, aside from a little snark here and there, I’m doing my best to check my biases at the door. Even being as problematic as it is, especially considering the amount of derision geek culture has experienced at the hands of New Criticism, I believe some of the ideas of The New Critics have value, if used in moderation. Close reading, a tool introduced by The New Critics is still a fundamental tool of literary criticism and the study of writing. Also, several major schools of literary theory are built on a foundation of New Criticism, including Post-Structuralism, Deconstruction Theory, and Reader-Response Theory. (Stanley Fish started out in the New Criticism Faction.)

Here’s a real-world example of how New Criticism can be useful when approaching a work.
While earning MFA in fiction, I got to have input in some of my reading. One semester, my mentor and I went deep down the genre fiction rabbit hole. With The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin having won the Hugo Award for best novel the previous summer, I decided to put that on my reading list. I did not enjoy it on first read. Not at all. I felt I understood why other people did enjoy it, but I just couldn’t get into the rhythms of the book. During my final semester, we had a guest speaker who taught in my undergrad program. She knew I was a genre writer and asked my opinion of Jemisin and her books. I gave my honest reply. We had a lengthy discussion which convinced me to give The Fifth Season a second try.

During my second read, I realized I had brought too much baggage to the work from my own experience as a reader, writer, and student of writing during my first read. That, coupled with some of the perspective and tense choices, resulted in me not having a good time with the book. By the time I’d gotten to the third chapter during my second read, I had the same experience; only… this time I asked, “What’s going on with me that I’m having this reaction to the book?” I checked all that baggage and approach the text from a place of curiosity. I asked questions: “Why?” “What is the effect here?” “How does this structural choice resonate with the story being told?” By changing my mindset from an emotional exploration to an analytical one, I discovered many things that I missed the first time around.

I still don’t know if I like The Fifth Season. However, I am curious. Very curious. Through close reading, I understand the care and precision Jemisin made in crafting her world and her story. I understand it’s well-deserved Hugo Award. If not for the tools I’d learned from studying New Criticism, I never would have taken that second journey into that world, and I wouldn’t have learned valuable lessons as a writer and a critic.

And this is the most valuable lesson of New Criticism. It gives us a way to separate ourselves from our personal feelings about the work or about the creator of the work. For example, I find reading both Earnest Hemingway and H.P. Lovecraft problematic. Both possessed deep character flaws. However, each man brought a shift in how we think about writing. If I want to study their writing with any kind of objectivity, (and I believe the work of both men, as problematic as they are, is worthy of study) I must use at least a little bit of the ideas of New Criticism.

New Criticism teaches us that liking a work (or the creator) does not mean the work has no value, nor is liking a work (or the work’s creator) necessary for learning from a work. Yes, I’m aware that this may be a controversial stance for some, but if we are going to have critical discussions about art, we sometimes have to separate our emotional response to the piece as well as the quality of the art from the qualities of the artist. Otherwise, all of our discussions will boil down to everyone emulating The Dude.

“Well, that’s just your opinion, man.”