Major+Theorists+of+New+Criticism

Ivor Armstrong Richards is often labeled as the father of New Criticism, wrote two literary criticism books (The Principles of Literary Criticism and of Practical Criticism) which helped to define the tenets of New Criticism and defined the process of close reading. 2

John Crowe Ransom, the leading figure and one of the founders of New Criticism, his 1941 volumes of writings named //The New Criticism// gave the theory it's name. Wrote Criticism Inc., which laid down the foundations of how New Critics viewed literary works. Ransom believed that "criticism must become more scientific, or precise and systematic." To this end, he argued that personal responses to literature, historical scholarship, linguistic scholarship, and what he termed "moral studies" should not influence literary criticism. He also argued that literary critics should regard a poem as an aesthetic object. 3

Ransom wants to exclude the following from the New Critical process: 4

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 * 1)  Personal registrations, which are declarations of the effect of the art-work upon the critic as reader.
 * 1) Synopsis and paraphrase. The high school classes and the women's clubs delight in these procedures, which are easiest of all the systematic exercises possible in the discussion of literary objects. I do not mean that the critic never uses them in his analysis of fiction and poetry, but he does not consider plot or story as identical with the real content. Plot is an abstract from content.
 * 1) Historical studies. These have a very wide range, and include studies of the general literary background; author's biography, of course with special reference to autobiographical evidences in the work itself; bibliographical items; the citation of literary originals and analogues, and therefore what, in general, is called comparative literature. Nothing can be more stimulating to critical analysis than comparative literature. But it may be conducted only superficially, if the comparisons are perfunctory and mechanical, or if the scholar is content with merely making the parallel citations.
 * 1) Linguistic studies. Under this head come those studies which define the meaning of unusual words and idioms, including the foreign and archaic ones, and identify the allusions. The total benefit of linguistics for criticism would be the assurance that the latter was based on perfect logical understanding of the content, or "interpretation." Acquaintance with all the languages and literatures in the world would not necessarily produce a critic, though it might save one from damaging errors.
 * 1) Moral studies. The moral standard applied is the one appropriate to the reviewer; it may be the Christian ethic, or the Aristotelian one, or the new proletarian gospel. But the moral content is not the whole content, which should never be relinquished.
 * 1) Any other special studies which deal with some abstract or prose content taken out of the work. Nearly all departments of knowledge may conceivably find their own materials in literature, and take them out. Studies have been made of Chaucer's command of mediaeval sciences, of Spenser's view of the Irish question, of Shakespeare's understanding of the law, of Milton's geography, of Hardy's place-names. The critic may well inform himself of these materials as possessed by the artist, but his business as critic is to discuss the literary assimilation of them.

Cleanth Brooks, one of the central figures of New Criticism, emphasized the close reading of a poem which can bring a critic to interpret and explicate the text. For Ransom, the text of the work is the primary focus of interpretation. With that, Ransom created the "articles of faith" for New Criticism which: 5


 * That the primary concern of criticism is with the problem of unity—the kind of whole which the literary work forms or fails to form, and the relation of the various parts to each other in building up this whole.
 * That in a successful work, format and content cannot be separated.
 * That form is meaning.
 * That literature is ultimately metaphorical and symbolic.
 * That the general and the universal are not seized upon by abstraction, but got at through the concrete and the particular.
 * That literature is not a surrogate for religion.
 * That, "specific moral problems" are the subject matter of literature, but that the purpose of literature is not to point a moral.
 * That the principles of criticism define the area relevant to literary criticism; they do not constitute a method for carrying out the criticism.

With these tenets of New Criticism, Brooks also wrote The Heresy of Paraphrase, which describes that the literary work should be examined at full value rather than pieces of the work which the entire interpretation derives from the entire text. Ransom also states that anything the critic evaluates must be derived from the text itself.

William Empson, along with John Crowe Ransom, founded the theory of New Criticism. Empson was best known for his literary analysis of poetry and emphasized that the text should be analyzed to obtain a full interpretation of the text. Empson's studies unearth layer upon layer of irony, suggestion, and argumentation in various literary works—a technique of textual criticism so influential that often Empson's contributions to certain domains of literary scholarship remain significant, though they may no longer be recognized as his. 6

Robert Penn Warren, along with William Empson, and John Crowe Ransom, founded the theory of New Criticism. Warren was best known for writing the Pulitzer Prize winning //All the King's Men// in 1947. 7



William Kurtz Wimsatt Jr. and Monroe Beardsley, co-authored the theories that is most associated with New Criticism. Their theories of The Intentional Fallacy and The Affective Fallacy both defined New Criticism as being mainly about the interpretation deriving from the text itself. 8 9

Intentional Fallacy- Theory that the reader confuses the interpretation of the text as being the author's intention of the text existing.

10 - Theory that the reader confuses their interpretation of the text as their understanding of what the text is about.