2. Published
American New Criticism, which was active from the late 1930s to the late
1950s, also took on most of the ideas of Eliot and Richards, as well as those of
Empson in University of Chicago or known as “The Chicago School”.
3. FOCUS
The new critics, poetry was also central to their concerns and seen as a quasi-
religious defence against sterile scientific modes of thought.…Poetry could
untouched by the prevalent materialism all around. A poem existed as a self-
evident, unique entity.
Yet New Criticism did not consider the poem to be cut off completely from
reality. It was not, in other words, an entirely formalist approach, which
would involve examining only the form of an isolated entity. The poem was
seen somehow to incorporate the outside world within itself. In practice, New
Criticism concentrated on paradoxes and ambivalence which could be
established in the text.
New Criticism clearly focused predominantly on poetry but one writer, Mark
Schorer, extended its main precepts to include analysis of prose fiction.
5. APPROACH
This perspective could be described as anti-intentional formalism.
The meaning of the text is seen to reside in the words and structures of the
text alone.
Literature is seen as a special kind of language concerned with the emotive
realm.
