This document outlines the agenda and procedures for an English class discussing New Criticism. It introduces the concept of using teams to earn participation points and provides the rules for team composition and point tracking. It then reviews literary theory and focuses on New Criticism as a formal, intrinsic approach. The key concepts of New Criticism - paradox, irony, tension, and ambiguity - are defined and illustrated with examples from literary works. Students are then instructed to get into their first groups to begin earning participation points.

1. EWRT 1C
Class 2

2. AGENDA
 Teams
 Review
 New Criticism
 The Formal Elements of
New Criticism
 Paradox
 Irony
 Tension
 Ambiguity
 QHQs
 The Online Hour

3. 2. The teams will change on or near essay
due dates.
3. You must change at least 50% of your
team after each project is completed.
4. You may never be on a team with the
same person more than twice.
5. You may never have a new team
composed of more than 50% of any
prior team.
1. We will often use teams
to earn participation
points. Your teams can be
made up of 4 or 5 people.

4. Points will be earned
for correct answers to
questions, meaningful
contributions to the
discussion, and the
willingness to share
your work. Each team
will track their own
points, but cheating
leads to death (or
loss of 25
participation points).
Answers,
comments, and
questions must be
posed in a manner
that promotes
learning. Those
who speak out of
turn or with
maliciousness will
not receive points
for their teams.

5. At the end of each class,
you will turn in a point
sheet with the names of
everyone in your group
(first name, last initial) and
your accumulated points
for the day.
It is your responsibility to
make the sheet, track the
points, and turn it in.
Sit near your team
members in class to
facilitate ease of group
discussions

6. Your First
Group!
 Get into groups
of three or four.
(1-2 minutes)
 If you can’t find a
group, please
raise your hand.
 Introduce
yourselves, and
write your names
down on a sheet
of paper. This
will be your point
sheet.

7. The Review
And a little something new!

8. Review of Literary Theory
 Literary theory is a tool box of strategies to help us read,
interpret, and understand the many facets of a literary
work. The ideas used in theory act as different lenses we
can use to view and talk about art, literature, and even
culture. These diverse lenses give us new ways to consider
works of art based on certain hypotheses and conventions
within that school of theory. They also allow us to focus on
particular aspects of a work we consider important.

9. Can you name
some literary
theories?
Which will we
focus on?
Let me ask you…

10. Some Theoretical Approaches
 Formalism and New Criticism
 Marxism and Critical Theory
 Structuralism and Poststructuralism (Deconstruction)
 New Historicism and Cultural Materialism
 Ethnic Studies and Postcolonial Criticism
 Gender Studies and Queer Theory
 Cultural Studies
 Psychoanalytical Criticism
 Trauma Theory
 Feminist Criticism

11. Text-Oriented (Intrinsic approaches)Approaches:
Formalism/ New Criticism
The school of New Criticism was
made up of an early 20th-century
(predominantly American) critics
who were focused on form (literary
structures), especially in poetry.
These new critics (predominantly
men) determined that the best way
to analyze literature is to imagine
that it exists in a vacuum.

12. Neither the reader's response or the author's
intentions matter to the new critic. Add to that
a purposeful disregard of the text's historical
time period and political context. For New
Criticism, a literary work is a timeless,
self-sufficient verbal object. Readers and
readings may change, but the literary text
stays the same. The text is a self-referential
object that exists in its own sanitized
environment, waiting for us to analyze
without any of our own experiences, views,
or prejudices complicating the single best
interpretation of a piece.

13. Why Study New Criticism?
 While their view of literature
might have been a bit limited,
the New Critics developed
close reading, a style of
analysis that focuses close
attention to the form and
structure of texts. This skill of
close reading is fundamental
to every other kind of theory.

14. The Formal Elements of New Criticism
Paradox
Irony
Tension
Ambiguity

15. For New Criticism, the complexity of a
text is created by the multiple and often
conflicting meanings woven through it.
And these meanings are a product
primarily of four kinds of linguistic
devices: paradox, irony, ambiguity,
and tension.
I. A. Richards
New Critic

16. Paradox
1. a situation or statement which seems impossible or is
difficult to understand because it contains two opposite facts
or characteristics;
2. a statement or idea that contradicts itself;
3. a person who has qualities that are contradictory;
4. something that conflicts with common opinion or belief

17. “All animals are equal, but some are
more equal than others.”
In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, one part of
the cardinal rule is the statement above. This
statement seems to not make any sense.
However, on closer examination, it gets clear
that Orwell points out a political truth. The
government in the novel claims that everyone
is equal but it has never treated everyone
equally. It is the concept of equality stated in
this paradox that is opposite to the common
belief of equality.

18. “I must be cruel to be kind.”
 This statement by Hamlet seems contradictory
at first. How can an individual treat others
kindly even when he is cruel? However,
Hamlet is referring to his mother and his
intention to kill Claudius (his father’s brother
[and murderer] and his mother’s husband) to
avenge his father’s death. This act will be a
tragedy for his mother, but Hamlet does not
want her to be with his father’s murderer any
longer; he believes that the murder will be
good for his mother.

19. IRONY - Spend your entire
political career fighting
central banking and they'll
put your face on their
most circulated bill.
Irony, in its simple form, means a statement or event
undermined by the context in which it occurs. Irony
involves a difference or contrast between appearance and
reality.
Irony exposes and underscores a contrast between
A. what is and what seems to be
B. what is and what ought to be
C. what is and what one wishes to be
D. what is and what one expects to be

20. There are three common types of irony in literature:
 Verbal irony occurs when people say the opposite of what they
mean. This is perhaps the most common type of irony. The reader
knows that a statement is ironic because of familiarity with the
situation or a description of voice, facial, or bodily expressions which
show the discrepancy.
• There are two kinds of verbal irony :
• Understatement occurs when one minimizes the nature of something.
• Overstatement occurs when one exaggerates the nature of something.
• Verbal irony in its most bitter and destructive form becomes sarcasm .
• Someone is condemned by a speaker pretending to praise him or her.
 In situational irony , the situation is different from what common
sense indicates it is, will be, or ought to be. Situational irony is often
used to expose hypocrisy and injustice. (The pickpocket being
pickpocketed).
 Dramatic irony occurs when a character states something that they
believe to be true but that the reader knows is not true. The key to
dramatic irony is the reader's foreknowledge of coming events.
• Second readings of stories often increases dramatic irony because of
knowledge that was not present in the first reading.

21. The following description of a wealthy husband’s
sense of moral rectitude, from Edith Wharton’s
House of Mirth (1905), is an example of an ironic
statement.
Once in the winter the rector would come to dine, and her
husband would beg her to go over the list and see that no
divorcées were included, except those who had showed signs
of penitence by being remarried to the very wealthy (57).
Part of the ironic implication of this passage is that the husband
is a hypocrite: he condemns divorce only if it is not followed by
the acquisition of equal or greater wealth, so what he really
condemns, under the guise of moral principles, is financial
decline (Tyson)

22. New Criticism, however, primarily valued irony in a broader
sense of the term, to indicate a text’s inclusion of varying
perspectives on the same characters or events (Tyson)
Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility (1811) offers us
perspectives from which we may utterly condemn Willoughby
for his treachery to Maryanne; forgive him because his
behavior resulted from a combination of love, financial
desperation, and a weakness of character which he himself
laments; sympathize with him for the severity of the
punishment his behavior has brought upon him; and see the
ways in which Maryanne’s willful foolishness contributed to her
own heartbreak.
Such a variety of possible viewpoints is considered a form of
irony because the credibility of each viewpoint undermines to
some extent the credibility of the others. The result is a
complexity of meaning that mirrors the complexity of human
experience and increases the text’s believability

23. Ambiguity
Ambiguity occurs when a word, image, or event
generates two or more different meanings.

24. Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987)
 For example, in Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987), the
image of the tree produced by the scar tissue on Sethe’s
back implies, among other things, suffering (the “tree”
resulted from a brutal whipping, which is emblematic of
all the hardships experienced under slavery), endurance
(trees can live for hundreds of years, and the scar tissue
itself testifies to Sethe’s remarkable ability to survive the
most traumatic experiences), and renewal (like the trees
that lose their leaves in the fall and are “reborn” every
spring, Sethe is offered, at the novel’s close, the chance
to make a new life).
 In scientific or everyday language, ambiguity is usually
considered a flaw because it’s equated with a lack of
clarity and precision. In literary language, however,
ambiguity is considered a source of richness, depth, and
complexity that adds to the text’s value.

25. Tension
 Finally, the complexity of a literary text is created by its
tension, which, broadly defined, means the linking
together of opposites. In its simplest form, tension is
created by the integration of the abstract and the
concrete, of general ideas embodied in specific images.

26. Tension in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman
For example, the concrete image of Willy’s tiny house, bathed in
blue light and surrounded by enormous apartment buildings that
emanate an angry orange glow, embodies the general idea of the
underdog, the victim of forces larger and more numerous than
itself. Similarly, the concrete image of Linda Loman singing Willy
to sleep embodies the general idea of the devoted wife, the
caretaker, the nurturer. Such concrete universals—or images and
fictional characters that are meaningful on both the concrete
level, where their meaning is literal and specific, and on the
symbolic level, where they have universal significance—are
considered a form of tension because they hold together the
opposing realms of physical reality and symbolic reality in a
way characteristic of literary language. In other words, the
Loman home and the character of Linda Loman represent both
themselves and something larger than themselves.

27. Tension is also created by the dynamic interplay among
the text’s opposing tendencies, that is, among its
paradoxes, ironies, and ambiguities (Tyson).
For example, we might say that the action of Death of a
Salesman is structured by the tension between reality and
illusion: between the harsh reality of Willy Loman’s life and the
self-delusion into which he keeps trying to escape. Ideally, the
text’s opposing tendencies are held in equilibrium by working
together to make a stable and coherent meaning. For
example, the tension between harsh reality and self-delusion
in Death of a Salesman is held in equilibrium by the following
meaning: so great is Willy’s desire to succeed as a salesman
and a father that his only defense against the common man’s
inevitable failures in a dog-eat-dog world is self-delusion, but
that self-delusion only increases his failure. Thus, the play
shows us how harsh reality and self-delusion feed off each
other until the only escape is death.

28. Paradox
Irony
Ambiguity
Tension
Let me ask
you--
Can you explain these terms?

29. Take ten
minutes to
discuss your
QHQs on
Literature,
Literary
Theory, or
New Criticism
In Groups

30. “fear of failure”?
When Tyson was describing how we as humans do not
want make fools of ourselves in general, I completely
understand what [s]he means. One of the examples Tyson
used was when [s]he was describing that someone does
not understand the idea of “the death of the author,” but
people around him are full of themselves to explain what
that phrase means. That shows us what it means that we
fear failure. We fear that if we do know a certain phrase
that others will laugh at us, or think that we are not smart.

31. QHQs: Earn one participation point if your question
appears in the QHQs for today
1. Q: Are there merits of New Criticism?
2. Q: Why is New Criticism considered important, even if it
is not used today?
3. Q. Why does it matter to fully understand the foundation
that built New Criticism theory?
4. Q: How does the removal of the author’s life offer
insight when analyzing text?
5. Q: Why do New Critics have to put other literary
scholars down when they write their own literary
criticisms?

32. 1.Question: Do literary pieces have their own
meanings, despite what the author is trying to
convey?
2.Q: How could a literary work be unaware of a
concept?
3.Q: Does the heresy of paraphrasing help or
destroy the idea of looking at “the text itself”?

33. 1. Q: Did authors use pen names to hide who
they were for reader’s to interpret their work
differently?
2. Question: Would authors change how they
wrote their books if everybody was a new
critic?
3. Q: Although we are not supposed to be
looking at what the author meant, is it the
literary work that is unaware of the concept,
or the author who wrote the literary work?

34. 1. It seems easy to get caught up in existing
interpretations of literary works. How often or to
what degree is our own analysis of literature
limited by the interpretations we’ve been exposed
to?
2. Q: How is literary language used to express
elements of the world around us?
3. Q. Why is it important to analyze texts from
different lenses?

35. Which major school of
literary theory
interests you and why?
What might literary
theory serve to reveal
about a literary text
that traditional
criticism cannot?
Let me ask
you--

36. The Online Hour
 A hybrid class meets both in the classroom and
electronically. For this course, it means that we will
meet twice a week for 1 hour and 50 minutes and
that you will complete the remaining hour of this
five unit course on your own, via a presentation on
the website. This work must be completed and
posted before our next meeting--preferably before
Sunday at 4:00 pm. In order to complete the hour,
you will simply go to the online presentation, in this
case “Class #3, and work through the slides on
your own. I will answer questions by email. We will
do a brief review of the material when we meet on
Mondays.

37. Homework
Review the readings and
ideas we have covered
this week.
Don’t forget to work
through the online portion
of the class. You can find
it under “Presentations,”
“Weeks 1-2” and “Class
3.”