Post by ernesto thaddeus m. solmerano on Jun 24, 2007 23:55:37 GMT -5
What is New Criticism?
It is a method of criticism which emphasizes the work as an independent creation, a self-contained unity, something to be studied in itself, not as part of a historical context or an author’s life.
The emphasis is on the formal elements of the work, the relationships between the parts: e.g. the construction of the plot, the contrasts between characters, the functions of point of view, symbol, irony, and so on.
Such criticism is, so to speak, intrinsic criticism, rather than extrinsic.
In analyzing and evaluating a particular work, the New Critics avoid reference to:
>:(1. the biography of the Author;
>:(2. the social conditions at the time of the production of the literary work;
>:(3. the psychological and moral effects on the readers;
>:(4. the place of the literary work in the history of literary forms; and
>:(5. the subject matter.
The proper concern of literary criticism is not with the external circumstances but with a detailed consideration of the work itself.
Because of this critical focus on the literary work in isolation from its attendant circumstances and effects, the New Criticism is often classified as a type of Formalism.
Two Common Approaches
In practice, new criticism usually takes one of two forms: explication and analysis.
Explication
A line-by-line or episode-by-episode commentary on what is going on in a text is an explication.
An explication does not deal with the writer’s life or times, and it is not a paraphrase – though it may include a paraphrase – but a commentary revealing your sense of the meaning of the work.
To this end it calls attention, as it proceeds, to the implications of words, the function of the different literary elements, the development of contrasts, and any other contributions to the meaning.
Explication is a method used chiefly in the study of fairly short poems.
Analysis
In interpreting and evaluating longer literary works, a more common approach than explicating is analyzing (literally, separating into parts in order to understand.)
Analysis, of course, is not a process used only in talking about literature. It is commonly applied in thinking about any complex matter.
For example, a discussion about the morality of condemning killers to death will distinguish at least between those killers whose actions are premeditated and those actions who are not. And in the first class it might distinguish between professional killers who carefully contrive a death, killers who are irrational except in their ability to contrive a death, and robbers who contrive a property crime and who kill only when they believe that killing is necessary in order to complete the intended crime. One can hardly talk usefully about capital punishment without making such analysis of killers.
And so it makes sense if you are writing about literature – say, about Gatsby’s “dream” in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby – to try to see the components of the dream. One critic begins a discussion of it thus:
Gatsby’s dream divides into three basic and related parts: the desire to repeat the past, the desire for money, and the desire for incarnation of “unutterable visions” in the material earth. - Ernest H. Lockridge, Twentieth Century Interpretations of “The Great Gatsby”
And, of course, the critic goes on to study these three components in detail.
It is a method of criticism which emphasizes the work as an independent creation, a self-contained unity, something to be studied in itself, not as part of a historical context or an author’s life.
The emphasis is on the formal elements of the work, the relationships between the parts: e.g. the construction of the plot, the contrasts between characters, the functions of point of view, symbol, irony, and so on.
Such criticism is, so to speak, intrinsic criticism, rather than extrinsic.
In analyzing and evaluating a particular work, the New Critics avoid reference to:
>:(1. the biography of the Author;
>:(2. the social conditions at the time of the production of the literary work;
>:(3. the psychological and moral effects on the readers;
>:(4. the place of the literary work in the history of literary forms; and
>:(5. the subject matter.
The proper concern of literary criticism is not with the external circumstances but with a detailed consideration of the work itself.
Because of this critical focus on the literary work in isolation from its attendant circumstances and effects, the New Criticism is often classified as a type of Formalism.
Two Common Approaches
In practice, new criticism usually takes one of two forms: explication and analysis.
Explication
A line-by-line or episode-by-episode commentary on what is going on in a text is an explication.
An explication does not deal with the writer’s life or times, and it is not a paraphrase – though it may include a paraphrase – but a commentary revealing your sense of the meaning of the work.
To this end it calls attention, as it proceeds, to the implications of words, the function of the different literary elements, the development of contrasts, and any other contributions to the meaning.
Explication is a method used chiefly in the study of fairly short poems.
Analysis
In interpreting and evaluating longer literary works, a more common approach than explicating is analyzing (literally, separating into parts in order to understand.)
Analysis, of course, is not a process used only in talking about literature. It is commonly applied in thinking about any complex matter.
For example, a discussion about the morality of condemning killers to death will distinguish at least between those killers whose actions are premeditated and those actions who are not. And in the first class it might distinguish between professional killers who carefully contrive a death, killers who are irrational except in their ability to contrive a death, and robbers who contrive a property crime and who kill only when they believe that killing is necessary in order to complete the intended crime. One can hardly talk usefully about capital punishment without making such analysis of killers.
And so it makes sense if you are writing about literature – say, about Gatsby’s “dream” in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby – to try to see the components of the dream. One critic begins a discussion of it thus:
Gatsby’s dream divides into three basic and related parts: the desire to repeat the past, the desire for money, and the desire for incarnation of “unutterable visions” in the material earth. - Ernest H. Lockridge, Twentieth Century Interpretations of “The Great Gatsby”
And, of course, the critic goes on to study these three components in detail.
