essay questions on new criticism

Analyzing Texts: A New Criticism Quiz

Welcome to the "Analyzing Texts: A New Criticism Quiz," where we embark on a literary journey delving into the profound realm of New Criticism. This movement, dominating mid-20th-century American literary criticism, revolutionized how we approach and interpret literature. In this quiz, you'll explore the core tenets of New Criticism, the influential figures who shaped it, and the key concepts that define this approach. Each question unravels layers of literary analysis that challenge conventional perspectives. Prepare to navigate through the literary landscape, unraveling the significance of self-contained aesthetic objects. Whether you're a seasoned literature enthusiast or a newcomer eager to explore critical Read more theory, this quiz offers a stimulating experience in understanding how New Criticism transformed the way we engage with texts. Let the questions transport you to the mid-20th century, where critics sought to unveil the complexities within literary works, fostering a deeper appreciation for the art of writing. Embrace the challenge and see if you can master the principles of New Criticism!

New Criticism Questions and Answers

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What is New Criticism?

A historical approach to literature

A comparative study of foreign languages

An empirical scientific approach

A formalist movement in literary theory

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Who wrote the book "The New Criticism," after which the movement derived its name?

I. A. Richards

Cleanth Brooks

John Crowe Ransom

Which Cambridge scholar's works, including "Practical Criticism," were important to New Criticism?

William Empson

Who among the following gave the idea of intentional and affective fallacy?

W. K. Wimsatt

Which critical essays of T.S. Eliot greatly influenced the formation of New Criticism?

"The Wasteland" and "Prufrock"

"Tradition and the Individual Talent" and "Hamlet and His Problems"

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "The Waste Land"

"The Canonization" and "The Well Wrought Urn"

Which of the following New Critics were the students of John Crowe Ransom, an important inspiration for the New Criticism movement?

T.S. Eliot, W. K. Wimsatt, and I. A. Richards

Allen Tate, Cleanth Brooks, and Robert Penn Warren

William Empson, Monroe Beardsley, and John Dewey

T.S. Eliot, William Empson, and I. A. Richards

How did T.S. Eliot's evaluative judgments influence the formation of New Criticism?

Condemning Romantic poets like Keats and Shelley

Liking for Victorian poets like Tennyson

Condemning Classical poets like Homer and Virgil

Liking for Renaissance poets like Shakespeare

Which essay by William K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley argued against an author's intention?

"The Intentional Fallacy"

"Close Reading and Criticism"

"The Authorial Dilemma"

"Analyzing Literary Intent"

During which decades was the hey-day of the New Criticism in American high schools and colleges?

1920s and 1930s

1940s and 1950s

1950s and 1960s

1960s and 1970s

In which year did William Empson publish his seminal text "Seven Types of Ambiguity"?

In the practice of literary studies, when did the technique of close reading emerge in britain, what does "seven types of ambiguity" by william empson organize around.

Types of ambiguity in novels

Types of ambiguity in literary genres

Types of ambiguity in poetry

Types of narrative techniques

What is the title of Cleanth Brooks' seminal text in the New Critical school of literary criticism?

"The Canonization"

"The Waste Land"

"The Well Wrought Urn"

"Understanding Poetry"

According to Brooks, what is considered "heresy" when trying to get at the meaning of a poem?

Paraphrasing a poem

Ignoring historical context

Analyzing meter and rhyme scheme

Disregarding the author's biography

What key concept did T.S. Eliot introduce in his essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent"?

The theory of impersonality

The intentional fallacy

The objective correlative

The hermeneutic circle

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Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › Uncategorized › New Criticism: An Essay

New Criticism: An Essay

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on March 16, 2016 • ( 11 )

At a time when literary artists were turning away from society into an introspective preoccupation with ‘art for art’s sake’, a similar movement was initiated in criticism, parallel to the Modernist ethos, by Cambridge professors IA Richards, FR Leavis and William Empson, and by the American Fugitives and Southern Agrarians Allan Tate, Robert Penn Warren, Cleanth Brooks and JC Ransom, which came to be known as New Criticism (which is also the name of a book by JC Ransom, 1941).

New Critics attempted to systematize the study of literature, and develop an approach that was centred on the rigorous study of the text itself. Thus it was distinctively formalist in character, focusing on the textual aspects of the text such as rhythm, metre, imagery and metaphor, by the method of close reading, as against reading that on the basis of external evidences such as the history, author’s biography or the socio-political/cultural conditions of the text’s production. Although the New Critics were against Coleridge ‘s Impressionistic Criticism, they seem to have inherited his concept of the poem as a unified organic whole which reconciles its internal conflicts and achieves a fine balance.

Like the liberal humanists, the New Critics believed in the primacy of the text as an autotelic artefact, complete within itself, written for its own sake, unified in form, and not dependent on its relation to the author’s intent/history etc. Such a text is to be read by the technique of close reading, which would reveal that its formal aspects serve to support the structure of meaning within the text. They believed that the critic’s job is to help readers appreciate the form and technique of the art and the mastery of the artist. Like Arnold and TS Eliot , New Critics also believed that “Western Tradition” is an unbroken continuum of internally consistent set of artistic conventions, going back to ancient Greece and continuing up to the present, and that good art participates in and extends the tradition, and that a critic’s job is to uphold the tradition and protect it from encroachments from commercialism, political posturing and vulgarity. As they believed in the canon, so also, they believed that literature/criticism is an internally edifying process that hones the sensibilities of “good” readers and sets them apart from the “unreflective masses”. Like the Modernists, they also made a firm distinction between “high” art and popular art, and held that “good” literature reflects universal values and is of timeless significance.

While IA Richards proposed close reading in his Principles of Literary Criticism and Practical Criticism , Wimsatt and Beardsley in their The Verbal Icon , eschewed the reading of a text based on the author’s intention (Intentional Fallacy) and on the impression on the reader (Affective Fallacy). Cleanth Brooks in his The Well Wrought Urn conceptualized the “heresy of paraphrase” and proposed that through the use of irony, paradox and ambiguity, a poet works constantly to resist any attempt at reducing the poem to a paraphrasable core. FR Leavis upheld austerity and moral seriousness in The Great Tradition while Empson explicated the multiple semantic possibilities of individual words in The Seven Types of Ambiguity .

In their emphasis on the “formal” aspects of a text, the New Critics were closely associated with the Russian Formalist school of Jakobson, Eichenbaum, Shklovsky and others. The New Critics’ attention to language and form was extended to the schools of contextual criticism, structuralism and poststructuralism. However, its principal notions were opposed by the Chicago school, New Historicism , Reader Response theory and Culture Studies .

For detailed note The American New Critics

7 What Is New Criticism?

When most college students think about analyzing a literary text, terms like symbol, imagery, meter, rhyme, alliteration, and metaphor may come to mind. These are all critical terms that became important for literary analysis with the advent of New Criticism.

New Criticism is a literary theory that emerged in the United States in the early 20th century, primarily in the 1930s and 1940s, as part of an attempt to help readers understand the “right” way to interpret a literary text. Unlike biographical criticism, New Criticism focuses on close reading and analysis of the text itself, rather than taking into account the author’s background or historical context.

New Critics believe that a work of literature should be viewed as a self-contained and self-referential entity—”a poem should not mean but be”—and that the meaning of the text can be discovered through careful examination of its language, structure, and imagery in the text. These scholars emphasize the ambiguity and complexity of language, believing that when multiple meanings can be found in a text, this complexity contributes to the work’s aesthetic value. According to Stephen Matterson, “Rather than calling it a critical movement, New Criticism may be better described as an empirical methodology that was, at its most basic and influential, a reading practice” (166).

The New Critics also emphasize the importance of irony and paradox, arguing that like ambiguity and complexity, these elements contribute to the depth and richness of a text. As noted above, they reject the use of information that is outside the text as a means to understand the text. This means that the author’s biography or historical context do not matter when we are interpreting a work of literature.

Prominent New Critics include Cleanth Brooks , John Crowe Ransom, and Robert Penn Warren. While New Criticism declined in popularity in the 1960s, its influence can still be seen in literary criticism today.

Learning Objectives

Using a literary theory, choose appropriate elements of literature (formal, content, or context) to focus on in support of an interpretation (CLO 2.3)
Emphasize what the work does and how it does it with respect to form, content, and context (CLO 2.4)
Understand how to perform close readings of texts (CLO 4.2)
Provide a thoughtful, thorough, and convincing interpretation of a text in support of a well-crafted thesis statement (CLO 5.1)

An Excerpt from New Criticism Scholarship

Read the following excerpt from the article “Criticism, Inc.” by John Crowe Ransom before proceeding with this chapter:

Criticism must become more scientific, or precise and systematic, and this means that it must be developed by the collective and sustained effort of learned persons—which means that its proper seat is in the universities. Scientific: but I do not think we need be afraid that criticism, trying to be a sort of science, will inevitably fail and give up in despair, or else fail without realizing it and enjoy some hollow and pretentious career. It will never be a very exact science, or even a nearly exact one. But neither will psychology, if that term continues to refer to psychic rather than physical phenomena; nor will sociology, as Pareto, quite contrary to his intention, appears to have furnished us with evidence for believing; nor even will economics. It does not matter whether we call them sciences or just systematic studies; the total effort of each to be effective must be consolidated and kept going. The studies which I have mentioned have immeasurably improved in understanding since they were taken over by the universities, and the same career looks possible for criticism. Rather than occasional criticism by amateurs, I should think the whole enterprise might be seriously taken in hand by professionals. Perhaps I use a distasteful figure, but I have the idea that what we need is Criticism, Inc., or Criticism, Ltd.

What Ransom proposes here is a new approach to literary criticism, one founded on the idea that there are universal things about literature that can be observed and measured, just as we can observe and measure things in science. This approach to literature does not require us to know anything at all about the author in order to undertake literary analysis of a text. It does, however, require training and mastery of literary analysis techniques, starting with the close reading. Conveniently, this training can only be undertaken in universities, led by qualified English professors.

Close Reading: An Important Tool for All Kinds of Criticism

Close reading is an important tool developed by the New Critics that we will use in all our approaches to literature going forward. Close reading is a method of literary analysis that involves careful and detailed examination of a text in order to uncover its meaning and significance. Elaine Showalter describes close reading as “slow reading, a deliberate attempt to detach ourselves from the magical power of story-telling and pay attention to language, imagery, allusion, intertextuality, syntax and form.” She compares close reading to “a form of defamiliarisation we use in order to break through our habitual and casual reading practices” (Teaching Literature, 98).

Scholars typically engage in close reading by following a systematic process that involves the following steps:

Selecting a text: Scholars choose a text to analyze, often one that is particularly complex or has multiple layers of meaning.
Reading the text: The scholar reads the text carefully and attentively, paying close attention to the language, form, and structure of the work. When working with poetry, scholars number the lines if this has not already been done.
Analyzing literary devices: The scholar identifies and analyzes literary devices such as metaphor, simile, imagery, and symbolism, as well as elements of form and structure such as meter, rhyme, and stanza.
Identifying patterns: The scholar looks for patterns and repetitions within the text, such as repeated words or images, and considers their significance.
Making connections: The scholar considers how different parts of the text relate to one another, and how the text as a whole relates to larger themes or ideas.
Formulating interpretations: The scholar develops interpretations of the text based on their close reading, drawing on evidence from the text to support their claims.

Overall, close reading is a rigorous and systematic process that requires careful attention to detail and a deep understanding of the literary devices and elements of form and structure that contribute to a text’s meaning and significance. The idea is that scholars will find unity in the complexity of a literary text. Texts that lack complexity are not considered to be literature (and we can infer that they are not worth our study).

Applying New Criticism Techniques to Literature

As I mentioned previously, literary criticism develops in conversation with literature, and perhaps one of the best examples of this concept with respect to New Criticism is the 1926 poem “Ars Poetica” by Archibald MacLeish.

This poem positions itself in the shadow of the Latin poet Horace’s “Ars Poetica.” But it does something very different. Instead of telling us how to write poetry, the poem shows us how to write poetry. Its deceptively simple structure, with couplets and slant rhymes, uses imagery and metaphor to demonstrate how to read and write a poem—how to practice the art of poetry. As Steven Lynn, author of Texts and Contexts , notes: “Only the poem can tell us how to read the poem” (51).

The complexity, irony, metaphors, oppositions, and tensions in this poem all predict the types of textual elements that will become important to the New Critics and their attempts to make a scientific practice of literary criticism.

Do a close reading of the poem below (we’ll do this together in class or as part of the recorded lecture for this chapter). After you complete your close reading of the poem and find evidence from the text, ask yourself, “So what? Who cares?” The answer to this question may help you to formulate a thesis statement that makes an argument about the text, using New Criticism as your critical method.

Example: “Ars Poetica” by Archibald MacLeish (1926)

Here are some questions to consider as you analyze the poem:

Form and Structure: Examine the form and structure of “Ars Poetica.” Is it written in a specific form? Comment on the poem’s overall structure, noting features of its overall organization (stanzas, breaks, etc.). Analyze the impact of the chosen form on the poem’s meaning and effectiveness. How does the form contribute to the poem’s meaning?
Meter and Rhythm: Investigate the poem’s meter and rhythm. Does the poem follow a specific metrical pattern, such as iambic pentameter? Or is it free verse? Analyze the impact of the poem’s rhythm on its tone and mood.
Genre and Intertextuality: Explore the genre of “Ars Poetica.” Discuss any intertextual references or allusions within the poem that enrich its meaning or create interplay with other literary works.
Rhyme and Sound Devices: Analyze the poem’s rhyme scheme. Identify any patterns or variations in rhyme, and examine their impact on the poem’s overall structure and tone. Discuss the effective use of sound devices, such as alliteration, assonance, or onomatopoeia, and their contribution to the poem’s auditory experience.
Imagery and Figurative Language: Examine the use of imagery in “Ars Poetica.” Identify specific examples of vivid or striking imagery and discuss their significance in conveying the poem’s central ideas. Identify and a nalyze figurative language, such as metaphors, similes, or personification, and consider their role in creating layers of meaning.
Themes and Philosophical Exploration: Identify and explore the major themes present in “Ars Poetica.” Discuss how the poem delves into the essence and purpose of poetry, touching upon topics such as brevity, timelessness, emotional truth, and the transformative power of art.

Note: Make sure to support your analysis with specific textual evidence from the poem. Use line numbers to refer to specific parts of the text.

After completing a close reading of the text, you’ll want to come up with a thesis statement that you can support with the evidence you’ve found.

Example of New Criticism thesis statement: The extensive use of metaphor in “Ars Poetica” shows what poetry is instead of telling us, leading to the inevitable conclusion that poems exist outside of any attempt to understand their meaning,

As mentioned in the questions above, MacLeish’s poem alludes to the Latin poet Horace’s treatise, Ars Poetica , an early work of literary criticism. Of poetry, Horace writes this:

“In the choice of his words, too, the author of the projected poem must be delicate and cautious, he must embrace one and reject another: you will express yourself eminently well, if a dexterous combination should give an air of novelty to a well-known word….

It is not enough that poems be beautiful; let them be tender and affecting, and bear away the soul of the auditor whithersoever they please….

As is painting, so is poetry: some pieces will strike you more if you stand near, and some, if you are at a greater distance: one loves the dark; another, which is not afraid of the critic’s subtle judgment, chooses to be seen in the light;”

How does MacLeish’s poem compare to Horace’s description of poetry? If you’ve been paying attention, you may object that this question would not be appropriate to a New Criticism analysis of the poem because we don’t consider the context, but in this case, Horace is definitely fair game because the title of the poem is an allusion to the well-known Classical text. When citing works in New Criticism scholarship, you may want to research any allusions you find.

New Criticism’s Critics: The Limitations of New Criticism

While New Criticism was an important development in literary criticism, this approach also has its limitations. According to Gerald Graff, “The New Critics’ attempt to emulate the empirical scientists by employing an objective, analytic method for literary texts was judged as one more symptom of the university’s capitulation to the capitalist-military industrial- technological complex” (72-73). But Graff also argues that New Criticism was much more than just objective close reading of a text–that the critic’s search for unity in the text was also a search for unity with the text. In other words, while New Critics sought to separate reader from text, this is an impossible task.

While New Criticism is certainly an important step in development of modern critical theories, there are also several limitations to this approach. First, this type of criticism assumes that the text is universal—that it has one universal meaning. For example, maybe you had to read The Great Gatsby in high school. I love this book. And I still remember the multiple choice test I took on it where there was one right answer to the question about what the green light at the end of the dock symbolized. If you’ve ever taken a multiple choice test on a poem or a book, chances are your teacher took a New Criticism approach. Remember again that the goal is to find empirical and scientific ways to evaluate literature. That means we have to be able to find the “right” answer.

A second rather obvious limitation is something that we all know intuitively: how the text affects you, the individual reader, does matter! With New Criticism, because the text is all we need to understand the text, we don’t take individual readers or their different experiences into account.

But we never read the same text the same way twice. Think about a book you’ve read more than once over the course of your life. Because you are not the same person when you reread the book, your experience of reading it will inevitably be different. Consider your response to Natasha Tretheway’s poem “Theories of Time and Space.” Many readers think this poem is hopeful, and you can certainly support that reading with evidence from the text. Other readers, myself included, think the poem is melancholy—that it’s basically about death. That reading is also supported by the text. How you read this—or any—text will depend on your individual experiences.

Ultimately, both of these concerns reveal a flaw in this empirical, scientific approach to literature. In the homogenous literary culture that existed in the 1920s-1950s, the same people were writing literature, reading literature, teaching literature, and evaluating literature. In Western societies, those people happened to be white men. This does not mean that the literature produced during this period isn’t amazing. It is! I love T.S. Eliot and Archibald MacLeish. But you can see how it’s much easier to find universal meaning when you’re in a closed circle of people who all were educated in the same way, read the same types of books, and are now teaching others the things they learned.

When we talk about exploding the canon , this is what we mean. By allowing new voices to enter these literary spaces, it’s no longer quite so easy to find a universal meaning in every text. These limitations of New Criticism ultimately led to the development of several other critical theories we will learn about in this course.

New Criticism Scholars

These are some influential practitioners of New Criticism.

John Crowe Ransom The New Criticism
I.A. Richards Practical Criticism
T.S. Eliot “Hamlet and His Problems” and “Tradition and Individual Talent”
Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren’s Understanding Fiction and Understanding Poetry
Rene Wellek and Robert Penn Warren’s Theory of Literature
Richard Ohmann, “Teaching and Studying Literature at the End of Ideology.”

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