Formalism and New Criticism were literary theory movements that focused on analyzing the formal elements of a text, such as literary devices, narrative elements, and poetic structures. The Russian Formalists and later the New Critics rejected historical or biographical context and instead analyzed how the text itself was put together and what it revealed about its themes through its language and form. Both schools of thought emphasized close reading of texts and viewed literature as an aesthetic object that could reveal universal truths about human nature through its symbolic elements and organized structure.