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Chapter 3 Criticism

The document discusses the emergence of Russian Formalism in the early 20th century, which rejected traditional literary criticism methods and emphasized the autonomy of literature and its formal elements. It contrasts Russian Formalism with New Criticism, highlighting their shared focus on textual analysis while noting their distinct historical contexts and methodologies. The text also outlines key concepts such as defamiliarization and the importance of literary devices in understanding a text's meaning.

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
60 views16 pages

Chapter 3 Criticism

The document discusses the emergence of Russian Formalism in the early 20th century, which rejected traditional literary criticism methods and emphasized the autonomy of literature and its formal elements. It contrasts Russian Formalism with New Criticism, highlighting their shared focus on textual analysis while noting their distinct historical contexts and methodologies. The text also outlines key concepts such as defamiliarization and the importance of literary devices in understanding a text's meaning.

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dagd75557
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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RUSSIAN FORMALISM AND NEW

CRITICISM

The essential structureof a poemn (as distinguished from the rational or logical
struchure of the "statement"which we abstract from it) resembles that of architec

ture or painting: it is a patternof resolved stresses.

Cleanth Brooks, Tlhe Wel Wrouglt Urn,Chapter 11

INTRODUCTION

y the end of the nineteenth century, no single school of


domi criticism
B nated
literary studies. For themost part, literary criticism was not even

considered an academic activity. Academic research was more frequently than


not governed by psychological or sociohistoricalprinciples that attempted to
show that a literary work was a socialor political product encased in a partic
ular history.Some scholars who rejected this view espoused a theory that ex
ulted the author, claiming a text to be the personal impressions and visions of
its creator,a place where the author and the reader can imaginatively revel in
the text and perhaps communicate with each other. And still others declared
that a literarywork should be read biographically,seeing the author's life and
private concernspeeping throughout the text. But in theearly part of the twen
tieth century, a radical break occurred in these traditionalways of interpreta

tion with the emergence of a group of Russian scholars who articulateda setof
interpretiveprinciples known as Russian Formalism.

RUSSIAN FORMALISM

In the middle of the second decade of the twentieth century, two distinct
groups of Russian scholars emerged in Moscow and Petrograd (St.
Petersburg) who would radically change the direction of literarytheory and
criticism. Founded in 1915, the Moscow Linguistic Circle included in its

48
Chapter 3• Russian Formalism and New Criticism 49

practitioners such members as Roman Jakobson, Jan Mukarovsky, Peter


Bogatyrev,and G. O. Vinokur. The following year in Petrograd, the Society
for theStudy of Poetic Language (OPOYAZ) was formed, including in its
membership Victor Shklovsky, Boris Eichenbaum, and Victor Vinogradov.
Although theadherents of both groups often disagreed concerning the prin
ciples of literary interpretation,they were united in their rejection of many
nineteenth-century assumptions of textual analysis, especially the beliefthat
awork of literature was the expression of the author's worldview and their

dismissal of psychological and biographical criticism as being irrelevant


to interpretation. These Russian scholars boldly declared the autonomy of

literatureand poetic language, advocating a scientificapproach to literary


interpretation. Literature, they believed, should be investigated as its own
discipline,not merely as a platform for discussing religious,political, socio
logical, orphilosophical ideas. By radicallydivorcing themselves from previ

ous literary approaches and advocating new principles of hermeneutics,


these members of the Moscow Linguistic Circle and of the Society for the
Study of Poetic Language are considered the founders of modern literary
criticism, establishing what is known as Russian Formalism.

Coined by opponents of the movement to deprecate Russian


Formalism's supposedly strict methodological approach to literary interpre
tation, the terms Formalism and Formalist were first rejected by the Russian

Formalists themselves,for they believed that their approach to literature was


both dynamic and evolutionary, not a "formal" or dogmatic one.
Nevertheless, the terms ultimately became the battle cry for the establish
ment of what they dubbed a science of literature.
The first task of the Russian Formalists was to define their new science.
Framing their theory on the work of Ferdinand de Saussure, the French lin
guist and founder of modern linguistics,the Formalists emphasized the au
tonomous nature of literature. The proper study of literature, they declared, is
literature itself. To study literature is to study poetics, which is an analysis of

a work's constituent parts -itslinguistic and structuralfeatures-or its form.


Form, they asserted, included the internal mechanics of the work itself, espe
language.It is these internalmechanics or whatthe Formalists
cially its poetic
called devices that compose the artfulness and literariness of any given text,
not a work's subject matter or content. Each device or compositional feature
possesses peculiar properties that can, as in any science, be analyzed.For the
Formalists, this new science of literature became an analysis of the literary
and artistic devices that the writer manipulates in creating a text.
The Formalists chief focus of literary analysis was the examination ofa
text'sliterariness, the language employed in the actual text. Literary lan
guage, they asserted, is different from everyday language. Unlike everyday
speech, literary language foregrounds itself, shouting, "Look at me; I am
special; I am unique." Through structure, imagery, syntax, rhyme scheme,
paradox and a host of other devices, literary language identifies itself as
50 Chapter 3• Russian Formalism and New Criticism

deviations from everyday speech patterns, ultimately producingthe defin


ing feature of literariness, defamiliarization. Coined by the Russian
Formalist Victor Shklovsky, defamiliarization is the process of making
strange (ostranenie) the familiar, of putting the old in new light, what
Shklovsky called a "sphere of new perception." By making strange the fa
miliar, defamiliarization (or what some Russian Formalists call
estrangement) slows down the act of perception of everyday words or ob
jects,forcing the listener or reader to reexamine the image. For.example,
when we read in a poem the words "dazzling darkness," our attention is
caught by the unusual pairing of these words. Our ordinary experience of
everyday language is slowed down because we must now unpack the mean
ing of the author's choice of language, When we do so,poetry with its ac
companying poetic diction has called'attention to itself as poetry and to its
literariness,allowing its listeners or readers to experience a small part of
their world in a new way by intensifying the act of perception.
In addition to examining the constituent devices present in poetry,
Shklovsky also analyzed narrative prose and declared that the structure ofa
narrativehas two aspects: fabula (story) and syuzhet (plot).Fabula is the
raw material of the story and can be considered somewhat akin to the
writer's working outline. This outline contains the chronological series of
events of the story. The syuzhet is the literary devices the writer uses to
transform a story (the fabula) into plot. By using such techniques as digres
sions, surprises, and disruptions, the writer dramatically alters the fabula,
making it awork of literaturethat now has the potential to provoke defamil
iarization, "to make strange"
the language of the text and render a fresh
view of language and/or the reader's world.
What Russian Formalism contributed to the study of literatureand liter
ary theory is a reevaluation of the text itself. Bringinga scientific approach to
literary studies, the Formalists redefined a text to meana unified collection
of various literary devices and conventions that can be objectively analyzed.
Literature not, they declared, the vision of an author or authorial intent.
is

Using linguisticprinciples, the Formalists asserted that literature, like all sci
ences,is a self-enclosed, law-governed system. To study literatureis to study
a text's form and only incidentally its content. For the Formalists, form is su
perior to content.
As a group, the Russian Formalists were suppressed and disbanded in
1930by the Soviet governmentbecause they were unwilling to view litera
ture through the Stalinist regime's political and ideological perspectives.
Their influence did continue to flourish in Czechoslovakia through the work
of the Prague Linguistic Circle (founded in 1926, its leading figure being
Roman Jakobson) and through the work of the Russian folktale scholar
Vladimir Propp. Fortunately forthe advancementof literary theory and crit
icism, Russian Formalism resurfaces in the 1960s in French and Ameriçan
structuralism (seeChapter 5).
Chapter 3 Russian Formalism and New Criticism 51

BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN RUSSIAN FORMALISM


AND NEW CRITICISM
Russian Formalism is sometimes paired with the first modern school of
Anglo-American criticism: the New Criticism. Dominating both American
and British criticism from the 1930s to the 1950s, New Criticism can be con
sidered a second cousin of Russian Formalism. Although both schools enm
ploy some similar terminology and are identified as types of Formalism,
there exists no direct relation between them. New Criticism has its own
unique history and development in Great Britain and the United States.
Interestingly,in the 1940s, two leading Russian Formalists, RomanJakobson
and René Wellek, came to the United States and actively participated in the
scholarly discussions of the New Critics. The interaction of these Russian
Formalists with the New Critics does evidence itself in some of Russian
Formalism's ideasbeing mirrored in New Criticalprinciples.

APPLYING RUSSIAN FORMALISM TO A LITERARY TEXT


Read carefully the following poem by the contemporary American essayist,
poet, scholar, and editor Mary M. Brown. After reading the text several times,
be able to apply, discuss, and demonstrate how the following terms from
Russian Formalism can be used in developing an interpretation of this text:

poetics
form

devices
literariness ODTÜKÜTÜPHANESI
foregrounding of literary language
defamiliarization.
METU LIBRARY

Early Spring Aubade


The branches outside this office window
too often block the light, but today the early

morning sun wavers, then prevails, stippling


this space with a tentative dawn that crawls

toward an even more fragile day.All the failures


of my life on earth are erased in this quivering

grace that works its lacy way through its own


curious birth. This is the one appointed hour
52 Chapter 3•Russian Formalism and New Criticism

that comes and gives and goes again--to0 soon


the briefest visit, that leaves this faltering glow,

the gift of a faint, definite urging,the finest


power we have--so close, Htis close to Love.

Mary M. Brown

NEW CRITICISM

IfBrown's poem "EarlySpring Aubad" were taught in many high school or


introductory-level college literature courses, the instructor would probably
begin the discussion with a set of questions that contain most, if not all, of
the following: What is the meaning of the title? What is the title's relation
ship to the rest of the poem? Where is the office located in line 1? What is
the meaning of the word stippling in line 3? Are there other words in the text
that need to be defined? In line 4, how can the dawn "crawl toward an even
more fragileday"? What is the relationship that Brown establishes between
failures and grace? What kind of birth occurs in the poem? What is the gift re

ferred to in the penultimate line of the poem? How is Brown defining the
word Love in the poem's last line? What relationships between words or
concepts is Brown establishing in the text? What of the poem's physical
structure? Does the arrangement of the words, phrases, or sentences help
establish relationships among them?What is the poem's tone? How do you
know this isthe tone, and what devices does Brown employ to establish this
tone? What tensionsdoes Brown create in the poem? What ambiguities?
Does Brown successfully resolve these tensions by thepoem's end? Based on
the answers to all of these questions, what does the poem mean? In other
words, what is the poem's form or its overall meaning?
Upon close examination of these discussion questions, a distinct pattern
or methodology quickly becomes evident. This particular interpretivemodel
begins with a close analysis of thepoem's individual words, including both
denotative and connotative meanings, then moves to a discussion of possi
ble allusions within the text. Following this discussion, the teacher/critic
searches for any patterns developed through individual words, phrases,
clauses, sentences, figures of speech, and allusions. The critic's sharp eye
also notes any symbols (eitherpublic or private) that represent something
else. Other elements for analysis include point of view, tone, and any other
poeticdevice that will help the reader understand the dramatic situation.
After ascertaining how all the aforementioned information interrelates and
finally coalesces in the poem, the critic can then declare what the poem
means. The poem's overall meaning or form depends almost solely on,the
text in front of the reader. No library research, no studying of the author's
Chapter3 • Russian Formalism and New Criticism 53

lifeand times, and no other extratextualinformation is needed, except, per


haps, a dictionary.The poem itself contains all the necessary information to
discover its meaning.
This method of analysis became thedominant school of thought and in
terpretativemethodology during the first two-thirds of the twentieth cen
tury in most high school and college literature classes and in both British and
American scholarship. Known as New Criticism, this approach to literary
analysisprovides the reader with a formula for arriving at the correct inter
pretation of atext using -for the most part--only the text itself. Such a
formulaic approach gives both the beginning student of literature and acad
emicians a seemingly objective approach for discovering a text's mneaning.
Using New Criticism's clearly articulated methodology, any intelligent
reader, say its adherents (calledNew Critics), can uncover a text's hitherto
so-calledhidden meaning.
New Criticism'stheoreticalideas,terminology, and critical methods are,
more often than not, disparaged by many present-day critics who them
selves are introducing new ideas concerning literary theory. Despite its cur
rent unpopularity, New Criticism stands as one of the most important
English-based contributions to literary critical analysis.Its easily repeatable
principles,teachableness, and seemingly undying popularity in the litera
ture classroom and in some scholarly journalshave enabled New Criticism
to enrich theoretical and practical criticism while helping gernerations of
readers to become close readers of texts.
The term New Criticism came into popular use to. describe this approach
to understanding literature with the 1941 publication of John Crowe
Ransom's The New Criticism, a work that contained Ransom's personal
analysis of several of his contemporary theorists and critics. Ransom him
self was a Southern poet, a critic, and one of the leading advocates of this

evolving movement.While teaching at Vanderbilt University in Nashville,


Tennessee, the 1920s, Ransom, along with several other professors and
in

students, formed the Fugitives, a group of scholars and critics who believed
in and practiced similar interpretative approaches to a text. Other sympa

thetic groups,such as theSouthern Agrarians (alsoin Nashville, Tennessee),


soon formed. In The New Criticism,Ransom articulates the principles of
these various groups and calls for an ontological critic, one who will recog
nize that a poem (used as a synonym in New Criticism for any literary
work) is a concrete entity, as is Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa or the score of
Handel's Messiah or any chemical element, such as iron or gold. Like these
concrete objects, a poem can be analyzed to discover its true or correct
meaning independent of its author's intention or of theemotional state, val
ues, or beliefs of either its author or its reader. Because this claim rests atthe
center of the movement's critical ideas, it is not surprising that the title of
Ransom's book quickly became the official name for this approach to liter

ary analysis.
54 Chapter 3 •Russian Formalism and New Criticism

Called modernism, Formalism, aesthetic criticism,textual criticism,or


ontological criticism throughout its long and successful history, New
Criticism, like all schools of criticism,does not represent a coherent body of
critical theory and methodology espoused by its followers. At best, New
Criticism and its adherents (i.e., New Critics) are an eclectic group, each
challenging, borrowing, and changing terminology, theory, and practices
from one another while asserting a common core of basic ideas. Their ulti

mate unity stems from their opposition to the prevailing methods of literary

analysis found in academia in the first part'of the twentieth century.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT

At the beginning of the twentieth century (often said to mark the start of
modernism or the modernist period), historical and biographical research
dominated literary scholarship. Criticism's function, many believed, was to
discover the historical context of a text and to ascertain how the authors'
lives influenced their writings. Such extrinsic analysis (examining elements
outside the text to uncover the text's meaning) became the norm in the liter
ature departments of many American universities and colleges. Other forms
of criticism and interpretation were often intermingled with this prominent
emphasis on history and biography. For example, some critics believed we
should appreciate the text for its beauty. For these impressionistic critics,

how we feel and what we personally see in a work of art are what really mat

ter. Others were more philosophical, arguing a naturalisticview of life that


emphasizes the importance of scientific thought in literary analysis. For ad
vocates of naturalism,human beings are considered animals who are caught
on definable scientific principles and who respond
in a world that operates
somewhat instinctivelyto their environments and internal drives. Still other
critics, the New Humanists,valued the moral qualities of art. Declaring that
human experience is basically ethical, these critics demanded that literary
analysis be based on themoral values exhibited in a text. Finaly,remnants of
nineteenth-century romanticism asserted themselves. For the romantic
scholar, literary study concerns itself with the artists' feelings,attitudes,and
personal visions exhibited in their works. Known as the expressive school,
this view values the individual artist's experiences as evidenced in a text.
Along with impressionism, the New Humanism, and naturalism, ex
pressionism and its romantic view of life and art were rejected by the "New"
Critics--and thus their name: critics who reacted against these "old" forms
of criticism. In declaring the objective existence of the poem or text,the New
Critics assert that only the poem itself can be objectively evaluated, not the
feelings, attitudes, values, and beliefs of the author or the reader. Because
they concern themselves primarily with an examination of the work itself
Chapter 3 • Russian Formalism and New Criticism 55

and not its historicalcontext or biographical elements, the New Critics be


long to a broad classificationof literary criticism called Formalism. Like the
Russian Formalists, the New Critics espouse what many call "the text and
text alone" approach to literary analysis.Although the New Criticsdo indeed
investigate a text's historical content and an author's biographical, social,
and cultural concerns, their approach to textual analysis emphasizes a close
reading of the text itself. Both the Russian Formalists and the New Critics
believe that every text and indeed all literature is a complex, rule-governed
system of forms (literary devices) that are analyzable. Such an analysis will
reveal with considerable objectivitythe text's meaning.
New Criticism's approach to textual criticism automatically leads to
multiple and divergent views about the elements that constitute what the
New Critics call the poem. Because many of the practitioners of this formal
istic criticism disagree with each other concerning the various elements that
constitute a poem and also hold differing approaches to textual analysis, it is
difficult to cite a definitive listof critics who consider themselves New
Critics. We can, however, group together critics who hold to some of the
same New Critical assumptions of poetic analysis. Among this group are
John Crowe Ransom,René Wellek, William K. Wimsatt, Monroe Beardsley,
William Empson, R. P. Blackmur, I. A. Richards, Robert Penn Warren, and
Cleanth Brooks. Thanks to the publication of the 1938 college text
Understanding Poetry: An Anthology for College Students by Brooks and
Warren, New Criticism emerged in American universities as the leading
form of textual analysis from the late 1930s until the early 1960s.
Although New Criticism dominated literary theory and criticism in the
1940s and 1950s, its roots stem from the early 1900s. Two British critics and
authors, T. S. Eliot and I. A. Richards, helped lay the foundation for this form
of formalisticanalysis. From Eliot, New Criticism borrows its insistence that
criticism be directed toward the poem, not the poet. The poet, declares Eliot
in his best-known essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1919), does

not infuse the poem with his or her personality and emotions, but uses larn
guage in such a way as to incorporate within the poem the impersonal feel
ings and emotions common to all humankind. According to Eliot, poetry is
not a freeing of the poet's emotions, but an escape from them. Because the
poem is an impersonal formulation of common feelings and emotions, the
successful poem unites the poet's impressions and ideaswith those common
to all humanity, producing a text that is not simply a reflectionof the poet's
personal feelings.
The New
1

the reader of poetry must


Critics also borrow Eliot's beliefthat
be instructed in literary technique. Eliot maintains that a good reader per
ceives a poem structurally,resulting in good criticism.Such a reader must
necessarily be trained in reading good poetry (especially the poetry of the
Elizabethans, John Donne, and other metaphysical poets), and be well ac
quainted with established poetic traditions. A poor reader, on the other
56 Chapter 3• Russian Formalism and New Criticism

hand, simply expresses his or her personal emotions and reactions to a text.
Such a reader is untrained in literary technique and craftsmanship.
Following Eliot's lead, the New Criticsdeclare thatthere areboth good and
bad readers or critics and good and bad criticism. A p0or reader and poor
criticism may argue that a poem can mean anything its reader or its author
wishes it to mean. On the other hand, a good reader or critic and good criti
cism will assert that only through a detailed structural analysis of a poem
can a reader discover the correct interpretation of a text.
Eliot also lends New Criticism some of its technical vocabulary. Thanks
to Eliot, for example, the term objective correlative has become a staple in
poetic jargon. According to Eliot, a writer can best express emotion through
art by devising what Eliot calls an objeçtive correlative,or a set of objects,a
situation, a chain of events, or reactions that can effectively awaken in the
reader the emotional response the author desires without being a direct
statement of that emotion. When the external elements are thus effectively
presented in a poem, they coalesce, immediately evoking an emotion. The
New Critics readily adopted and advanced this indirect or impersonal the
ory of the creation of emotions in poetry.
From Eliot's Britishcontemporary I. A. Richards, a psychologist, rhetori
cian, poet, and literary critic, New Criticism borrows a term that has become
synonymous with its methods of analysis, practical criticism. In an experi
ment atCambridge University, Richards distributed to his students copies of
poems minus such information as the authors, dates, and oddities of spelling
and punctuation, and asked them to record their responses. From these data,
Richards identified the difficulties that poetry presents to its readers, includ
ing matters of interpretation,poetic techniques, and specificmeanings. From
this analysis, Richards then devised an intricate system for arriving at a
poem's meaning, including a minute scrutiny of the text. It is this close
sCrutiny or close reading of a text that has become synonymous with New
Criticism.
From Eliot, Richards, and other critics, New Criticism borrows, amends,
and adds its own ideas and concerns. Although few of its advocates would
agree on many tenets, defirnitions, and techniques, a core of assumptions
does exist, thereby allowing us to identify adherents of this critical approach.

ASSUMPTIONS

New Criticism begins by assuming that the study of imaginative literature is


valuable; to study poetry or any literary work is to engage oneself in an
aesthetic experience (i.e., the effects produced on an individual when con
templating a work of art) that can lead to truth. The truth discoverable
through an aesthetic experience is distinguishable from the truth that science
Chapter 3 • RussianFormalism and New Criticism 57

provides us. Science speakspropositionally,telling us whethera statement is


demonstrably either true or false. Pure water, in the language of science,
freezesat 32 degrees Fahrenheit,not 30 or 31.Poetic truth, on the other hand,
involves the use of the imagination and intuition, a form of truth that, ac
cording to the New Critics, is discernable only in poetry. In the aesthetic ex
perience alone we are cut off from mundane or practical concerns, from mere
rhetorical, doctrinal,or propositionalstatements. Through an examination of
the poem itself, we can ascertaintruths that cannot be perceived through the
languageand logic of science.Both science and poetry, then,provide differ

entbut valid sources of knowledge and avenues to truth.


Similar to many other critical theories, New Criticism's theory begins by
defining its object of concern, in this case a poem. (New Critics use the word
poem synonymously with work of art; however, their methodology works
most efficiently with poetry rather than any other genre.)New Critics assert
that a poem has ontologicalstatuS-that is, it possesses its own being and ex
ists like any other object. For the New Critics, a poem becomes an artifact,

that is, an objective, self-contained,autonomous entitywith its own struc


ture. As William K. Wimsatt declares, apoem becomes a "verbal icon," orthe

New Critical assumption that a work artachieves its meaning through the
of

interrelationships of sound, texture, structure,rhetoric, and a host of other


devices.
literary
Having declared a poem an object in its own right, the New Critics then
develop their For them, the meaning of a poem must
objective theory of art.

not be equated with its author's feelingsor stated or implied intentions.To


believe that a poem's meaning is nothing more than an expression of the pri
vate experiences or intentionsof its author is to commit a fundamental error
of interpretation, which the New Critics call the intentional fallacy.
According to William K. Wimsatt and MonroeC. Beardsley, the New Critics
who coined this term, the design or intentof the author is neither available
nor desirable as a standard for judging a literary work. Along with many
other New Critics, Wimsatt and Beardsley believe that the poem is an object.
Any literary work is a public text that can only be understood by applying
the standards of public discourse, not simply the private experience, con
cerns, and vocabulary of its author. In their widely read New Critical text
Understanding Poetry, however, Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren
temper the dogmatism of the intentionalfallacy, asserting that understand
ing the origin ofapoem may indeed enhance its appreciation.They do insist,
however, that a poem's origin or historical setting must notbe confused with
dclosereading of the actual poem itself.

That the poem is somehow related to its author cannot be denied. n


"Tradition and the Individual Talent,"Eliot states the New Critical position
on the relationshipbetween the author and his or her work. The basis of
Eliot's argument isan analogy. We all know, he says, that certain chemical re

actions occur in the presence ofa catalyst, an element that causes, but is not
if we place hydrogen peroxide, a com
affected by, the reaction. For example,
mon household disinfectant, in a clear bottle and expose it to the sun's rays,
we will no longer have hydrogen peroxide. Acting as a catalyst, the sun's
rays will cause a chemical reaction to occur, breaking down the hydrogen
peroxide into its various parts, while the sun's rays remain unaffected.
mind serves as a catalyst for the reaction that yields
Similarly, the poet's
the poem. During the creative process, the poet's mind, serving as the cata
lyst, brings together the experiences of the author's personality. (not the
author's personality traits or attributes), into an external object and a new
creation: the poem. It is not the personality traits of the author that coalesce
to form thepoem, but the experiences of the author's personality. In distin
guishing between the personality and the mind of the poet, Eliot asserts that
the created entity, the poem, is about the experiences of the author that are
similar to all of our experiences. By structuring these experiences, the poem
allows us to examine them objectively.
Dismissing the poet's stated or supposed intentions as a means of dis
covering the text's meaning, the New Critics give little credence to the bio
graphical or contextual history of a poem. If the intentional fallacy is correct,
then unearthing biographical data will not help us ascertain a poem's mean
ing.Likewise, trying to place a poem in its social or political context will tell
us much social or political history about the time when the poem was au
thored. Although such information may indeed help in understanding the
poem's sociological or historical context, the poem's real meaning cannot re
side in this extrinsic or outside-the-text information.
Of particular importance to the New Critics is the etymology of individ
ual words. Because the words of a poem sometimes change meaning from
one time period to another, the critic often needs to conduct historical re
search, discovering what individual words meant at the time the poem was
written. For example, if a fifteenth-century poet called someone a "nice per
son," the New Critics would investigate the meaning of the word nice in
fifteenth-century usage, discovering thatat thattime nice meant foolish. The
Oxford English Dictionary (a dictionary that cites a word's multiple historical
meanings chronologically) becomes one of the New Critic's most used tools.
Placing little emphasison the author, the social context, ora text's histor
ical situation as a source for discovering a poem's meaning, the New Critics

assert that a reader's emotional response to a text is neither important nor


equivalernt to its interpretation. The New Critics call such an error in judg
ment the affective fallacy, a mistake in interpretation that confuses what a
poem is (its meaning) with what it does. If we derive our standard of criti
cism, say the New Critics, from the psychological effects of the poem, we are
then left with impressionism or, worse yet, relativism, the belief that a poem
has innumerable valid interpretations.
Where, then,can we find or discover a poem's meaning? According to the
New Critics,a poem's meaning does not residein the author, the historical or
Chapter 3 •Russian Formalism and New Criticism 59

social context of the poem, or even in the reader. Because the poem itself is

an artifact or an objective entity, its meaning must reside within its own
structure, within the poem Like all other
itself. objects, a poem and its struc
turecan be analyzed scientifically. Accordingly, careful scrutiny reveals that
a poem's structure operates according to a complex series of laws. By
closely analyzing this structure, the New Critics believe that they have de
vised a methodology and a standard of excellence that we can apply to all

poems to discover their correct meaning. It is the critic's job,they conclude,

to ascertain the structure of the poem, to see how it operates to achieve its
unity, and to discover how meaning evolves directly from the poem itself.
New Criticism sees the poet as an organizer of the content of human ex
perience. Structuring the poem around the often confusing and sometimes
contradictory experiences of life, the poet crafts the poem in such a way that
the text stirs its readers' emotions and causes its readers to reflect on the
poem's contents. As an artisan, the poet is most concerned with effectively
developing the poem's structure because the artist realizes that themeaning
of a work emerges from its structure. The poet's chief concern,maintain the
New Critics, ishow meaning is achieved through the various and sometimes
conflicting elements operating in the poem itself.
The chief characteristicof a poem-and therefore of its structureis co
herence or interrelatedness. Borrowing their ideas from the writings of
Samuel T. Coleridge (Biographia Literaria, 1817), the New Critics posit the
organic unity of a poem--that is, all parts of a poem are necessarily interre
lated, with each part reflecting and helping to support the poem's central
idea. Such organic unity allows for the harmonization of conflicting ideas,
feelings, and attitudes, and results in the poem's overall oneness. Superior
poetry, declare the New Critics, achieves such oneness through paradox,
irony,and ambiguity. Because such tensions are necessarily a part of every
one'slife, it is only fitting and appropriate, say the New Critics, that superior
poetry presents these tensions while at the same time showing how they are
resolved within the poem to achieve the tex's organic unity.
Because the poem's chief characteristicis its oneness, New Criticsbelieve
that a poem's form and content are inseparable. For the New Critics, form is
more than the external structure of a poem; a poem's form encompasses and
simultaneously rises above the usual definition of poetic structure (i.e.,
whether or not the poem isa Shakespearean or Petrarchan sonnet, or a lyric,
or any other poetic structure having meter, rhyme, orsome other poetic pat
tern). In New Criticism, form is defined as the overall effect the poem creates.
Because all the various parts of a poem combine to create this effect,each
poem's form is unique. When all the elements of a poem work together to
form a single,unified effect-the poem's form- New Critics declare that the
poet has written a successful or good poem,one that possesses organic unity.
Because all good and successful poems have organic unity, it would be
inconceivable to try to separate a poem's form and its content, maintain the
60 Chapter 3•Russian Formalism and New Criticism

New Critics. How can we what a poem says from how it says it?
separate
Because all the elements of a poem, both structural and aesthetic, work to
gether to achieve a poem's effect or form, it is impossible to discuss the over
all meaning of a poem by isolating or separating form and content.
For the New Critic,it is also inconceivable to believe that a poem's inter
pretation is equal to a mere paraphrased Labeling such an
version of the text.

erroneous belief the heresy of paraphrase, a term coined by Cleanth Brooks


in his book The Well Wrought Urn, New Critics maintain that a poem is not
simply a statement that is either true or fase, but a bundle of harmonized
tensions and resolved stresses, more like a ballet or musical composition
than a statement of prose. No simple paraphrase can equal the meaning of a
poem because the poem itself resists through its inner tensions any prose
statement that attenmpts to encapsulate its meaning. Paraphrases may help
readers in their initial understanding of a poem, but such prose statements
must be considered working hypotheses that may or may not lead to a true
understanding of the poem's meaning. The New Critics insist that such
paraphrased statements about a poem must never be considered equivalent
to the poem's structure or form.

METHODOLOGY
Believing in both the thematic and structural unity of a poem, New Critics
search fora poem's meaning within the text's structure by finding the tensions
and conflictsthat must eventually be resolved into a harmonious whole and
that inevitably lead to the creation of thepoem's chief effect. Such a search first

leads New Critics to the poem's diction or word choice. Unlike scientific dis

course with its precision of terminology, poetic diction often has multiple
meanings and immediately sets up a series of tensions within the text. For
example, many words have both a denotation, or dictionary meaning, and
connotation(s), or implied meanings. A word's denotation may be in direct
conflictwith its determined by the context of the poem.
connotative meaning
In addition, it may be difficult to differentiatebetween thevarious denotations
or connotations of a word. For example, if someone writes that "afat head
enjoys thefat of the land," the reader must note the various denotative and
connotative differences of the word fat. At the start of poetic analysis, then,
conflicts or tensions exist by the very nature of poetic diction.New Criticscall

this tension ambiguity, or language's capacity to sustain multiple meanings.


At the heart of literary language or discourse, claim theNew Critics, is ambigu
ity.At the end of a close reading of a text, all such ambiguities mustbe resolved.

Even a surface level of understanding or upon a first reading, a poem,


from a New Critics perspective, is a reconciliation of conflicts,of opposing
meanings and tensions. Because a poem's form and content are indivisible,it
Chapter 3•Russian Formalism and New Criticism 61

is the critic's task to analyze the poetic diction to ascertain such tensions.

Although various New Critics give a variety of names to the poetic elements
that make up a poem's structure, all agree that the poem's meaning is de
rived from the oscillating tensions and conflicts that are brought to the sur
face through the poetic diction.
For example, Cleanth Brooks claims that the chief elements in a poem
are paradox and irony, two closely related terms that imply that a word or
phrase is qualified or even undercut by its context. By definition,a paradox
is a seemingly self-contradictorystatement that must be resolved on a higher
metaphysical level. The New Critics broaden this definition, maintaining
that literary language by its very nature is ambiguous. Literary discourse,
unlike normal or everyday larnguage, is able to sustain multiple meanings.
For Brooks, the discourse of poetry is "the language of paradox." Similarly,
the New Critics enhance the meaning of the word irony. Irony is a figre of
speech in which the words express a meaning that is often the direct opp0
site of their literal meaning. In New Criticism irony is the poet's ability to
recognize incongruities, and it becomes New Criticism's master trope be
cause it is essentialfor the production of paradox and ambiguity. Some New
Criticsuse the word tension to describe the opposition orconflictsoperating
within a text. For these critics, tension impliesthe conflicts between a word's
denotation and its connotation, between a literal detail and a figurative one,
and between an abstract and a concrete detail.
Because conflict, ambiguity, or tension controls the poem's structure, the
meaning of apoem can be discovered only by contextually analyzing the poetic
elements and diction. Furthermore, because context governs meaning, mearn
ings of individual words or phrases are necessarily context related and unique
to the poem in which they occur.It is the task of the critic to unravel the various
apparent conflicts and tensions within each poem and ultimately to show that
the poem possesses organic unity,thereby demonstrating how all parts of the
poem are interrelated and support the poem's chief paradox. This paradox,
which New Critics often call form or overall effect, can usually be expressed in
one sentence thatcontains the main tension and theresolution of that tension.It
is this "key idea" to which all other elements of the poem must relate.

Although most New Critics would agree that the process of discovering
the poem's form is not necessarily linear (because advanced readers often
see ambiguities and ironies upon a first reading of a text), New Criticism
provides the reader with a distinct methodology to discover a text'scentral
paradox or tension. These guided stepsallow both novices and advanced lit
erary scholars to enter the discussion of a text'sultimate meaning, each con
tributing to the poem's interpretation.From a New Critical perspective, one
begins the journey of discovering a text's correct or valid interpretation by
reading the poem several times and by carefully noting the work's title (if it
has one) and its relationship to the text. Then, by following the prescribed
steps listed here, the readercan ascertain a text's meaning. The more practice
62 Chapter 3•Russian Formalism and New Criticism

a readerhas at following this methodology and themore opportunities he or


she has to be guided by an advanced reader and critic, the more adept the
reader will undoubtedly become at textual analysis:

Step 1 Examine the text's diction. Consider the denotations,connotations,and


etymologicalroots of all words in the text.

Step 2 Examine all allusions found within the text by tracing their roots to thepri
mary text or source,if possible.
Step 3 Analyze all images, symbols, and figures of speech within the text. Note
the relationships, if any, among the elements,both within the same cate
gory (e.g, between images) and among the various elements (e.g., be
tween an image and a symbol).
Step 4 Examine and analyze the various structural patterns that appear within
the text, including the technical aspectsof prosody, or the principles that
govern thewriting of poetry, such as rhyme, meter,rhythm, and so forth.
Note how the poet manipulates metrical devices, grammatical construc
tions, tonal patterns,and syntactic patterns of words, phrases,clauses, or
sentences.Determine how these various patterns interrelate with each
other and with all elements discussed in steps1 to 3.
Step 5 Consider such elements as tone, theme, point of view, and any other ele
ment-dialogue, foreshadowing, narration, parody, setting, and so forth
that directly relate to the text's dramatic situation.

Step 6 Look for interrelationships of all elements stated in steps 1-5, noting
where tensions, ambiguities,or paradoxes arise.
Step 7 After carefully examining all of the above, state the poem's chief, overar
ching tension, and explain how the poem achieves its dominant effect by
resolving this tension.

Because all poems are unique, the process of uncovering a poem's chief
tension is also unique. By using the prescribed methodology of New
Criticism, New Criticsbelieve that readers will be able to justify their inter
pretations of a text with information gleaned from the text alone while en
joying the aestheticprocess that allows them to articulatethe meaning. text's

According to such New Critical principles, a good critic examines a


poem's structure by scrutinizing its poetic elements, rooting out and show
ing its inner tensions, and demonstrating how the poem supports its overall
meaning by reconciling these tensions into a unified whole. By implication,
bad critics are those who insist on imposing mainly extrinsicevidence, such
as historicalor biographical information, on a text to discover its meaning.
These critics fail to realize that the text itself elicits its own meaning. More
frequently than not, they also fail to discuss orexamine the definitiveaspects
of a work of art: irony, paradox, and ambiguity. They, therefore,flounder in
their analysis, declare the New Critics, because such unskilled critics believe
more often than not that a text can have multiple meanings.
Asserting that a poem or work of art has ontological status, the New
Critics believe that a text ultimately has one and only one correctinterpretation
Chapter 3•Russian Formalism and New Criticism 63

and that the poem provides all the necessary information for revealing
itself

its meaning. By scrutinizing the text and giving it a close reading, and by

providing readers with a setof norms that will assist them in discovering the
correctinterpretationof the text, New Criticismprovides a teachable,workable
framework for literary analysis.

QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS

To apply the assumptions and methodology of New Criticism,read carefully


Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "YoungGoodman Brown" (located at the
back of this text). After reading the story,answer each of the following ques
tions as they relate to Hawthorne's tale. When you have completed your an
swers, be prepared to discuss your findings or what the New Critics call
your interpretation of this short story.

If the text has a title, what is the relationship of the title to the rest of the poem?
Before answering this question,New Critical theory and practice assume that
the critic has read the text severaltimes.

What words, if any,need to be defined?


What words and their etymologicalroots need to be scrutinized?
What relationships or patterns do you see among any words in the text?
What words in thetext possessvarious connotativemeanings? Do these various
shades of meaning help establish relationships or patterns in the text?

What allusions, if any,are in the text? Trace these allusions to their appropriate
sources and explore how the origins of the allusions help elucidate meaning in
this particular text.

Whatsymbols, images, and figures of speech are used? What is the relationship
between any symbol and/or image? Between an image and another image?
Between a figure of speech and an image? A symbol?
What elements of prosody can you note and discuss?Look for rhyme,meter,and
stanza patterns.
What is the tone of the work?

From what pointof view is the contentof the text being told?

What tensions, ambiguities,or paradoxes arise within the text?

What do you believethe chief paradox or irony is in the text?


How do all theelements of thetext support and develop the text's chief paradox?

CRITIQUES AND RESPONSES

With theemergence of New Criticism in the1940s came thebirth and growth


of literaturedepartments in colleges and universities across America. Its
methodological and somewhat scientific approach to literature gained

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