Literary Theory notes

1. 1
New Criticism
Aristotelian criticism was about the achieving the catharsis of the reader and
romanticism, they come to the subjectivity, author's feeling.
Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling: it takes its origin from
emotion recollected in tranquility. (Wordsworth)
New criticism appeared as a reaction toward biographical and traditional historical criticism. It is
a type of formalist literary criticism that reached its height during the 1940 s and 1950s. it is also
called objective criticism. New criticism has another name that is called modernism. That was
based on tradition and individual talent in which T. S. Eliot presented the theory of impersonality
and described the definition of poetry against the Wordsworth definition of poetry.
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the
expression of personality but an escape from personality.
T. S. Eliot said that poetry is an organization rather than inspiration. he doesn't believe in the
theory of inspiration in which Wordsworth said that a poet should be inspired to write. he rather
believes that it is more than an organization.
He also defined the objective correlative in the Hamlet and his problems;
a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that
particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in
sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.
New criticism is bringing a new approach that never cares about the feelings of author
and the readers. Text should be explained by text only. It should be far from reader's feeling or
emotion and far from the author's biography or feeling.
So, the main idea of a new criticism is that a literary work has a concrete entity. Which
means that a literature should free from international fallacy and affective fallacy.
When a reader enters into the text with the intention of writer's biography or writer's point of
view it is called intentional fallacy.
Intentional fallacy is a term coined by American critics Wimsatt and Beardsley
To describe the common assumption that an author's declared or assumed intention
in writing a work is a proper basis for deciding upon the work's meaning or value.
When a reader is influenced by the work of the author, it is called affective fallacy.
Affective fallacy is a term from literary criticism used to refer to the supposed error
of judging or evaluating a text on the basis of its emotional effects on a reader.

2. 2
The principle belief of the new criticism is to close text reading.
Close reading is a way of analyzing a text that involves careful attention to a short
passage or poem.
When you conduct a close reading, you focus on a specific section of text and explain how
language is used and/or how an author builds an argument. This attention to detail allows you to
assess and discuss the larger themes or concerns of the text as a whole.
There are two varieties of new criticism
Ontological criticism New criticism followers has view that text has ontological existence. it
means that the text has independence existence and we should not enter into the text with
intentional fallacy and affective fallacy.
Aesthetic criticism In aesthetic criticism, the focus is on the discovering the esthetic values of
the text that which type of beauty is found in text. So it is the critically judging beauty and
ugliness, tastefulness and tastelessness, style and fashion, meaning and quality of design.
Features of new criticism
These are some features of new criticism
i. New criticism is distinctive formal in approach
ii. New criticism critics focus on close reading method.
iii. New criticism critics favored the genre of poetry over literary form
iv. The aesthetic qualities are used by the new critics largely derived by / from the critical
writing of S. T. Coleridge biographical literary, Wordsworth lyrical ballad.
v. Coleridge was the first to describe the poetry unified organic whole which reconcised its
internal conflict and reaches some balance and harmony.
In conclusion, we can say that New Criticism is an approach to literature which was developed
by a group of American critics, most of who taught at southern universities during the years
following the First World War. One of the most influential writers of New Criticism poetic
theory was I. A. Richards. The New Critics wanted to avoid impressionistic criticism, which
risked being shallow and arbitrary, and social/ historical approaches which might easily be
subsumed by other disciplines. Thus, they attempted to systematize the study of literature, to
develop an approach which was centered on the rigorous study of the text itself.