The document outlines the evolution of literary criticism, contrasting traditional practices focused on biographical and historical context with New Criticism and Formalism, which prioritize textual analysis and close reading. Key concepts include the rejection of authorial intentions as intentional fallacy and the importance of form over content. Although New Criticism and Formalism significantly influenced modern literary theories, they also face criticisms for their limitations in understanding meaning as variable and context-dependent.

1. New Criticism and
Formalism
Content For BS and Mphil
English

2. Outline
• Traditional Critical Practice
• New Criticism
• Practical Criticism
• Characteristics of New Critical Practice
• Formalism
• Close-reading Method
• Interpretation of related terms
• Conclusion and Activity

3. Traditional Critical Practice
• Traditional criticism worked like this:
• Until early decades of 20th century, literary
criticism in teaching and learning was
biographical or historical. While teaching
Wordsworth’s poem “Lucy”, the teacher would
tell the students about Wordsworth’s life, his
views about the poem if they existed and
historical existence of the girl. He would teach
Wordsworth’s life and period not the actual
poem. A critic’s main job was to know
biographical details and explain the ‘authorial
intentions’.

4. Conti…
• Dr. Johnson recorded the biographical details and
views of the poets of his times in The Lives of the
Poets to guide the critics.
• While teaching Wordsworth’s poem “The French
Revolution”, the teacher would teach the history
of the revolution and not the actual poem.
• Students would tell about the poet first. Then
they would describe the poem’s content: What
was the poem about? What were the things
described in the poem? In the end, they would
describe the images, symbols and rhyme scheme
used to describe the content effectively.

5. Characteristics of New Criticism
• New critics and formalists questioned the author-
centric and historical-oriented critical practices.
Formalists declared the practice of knowing the
authorial intentions as Intentional fallacy.
• They argued that the author’s own view about his
own literary work was just one of several views
and was in no way privileged.
• Work should be judged by its own worth or
merits not by the intensity of the poet’s feelings
or its emotional effects. This may be termed as
Affective Fallacy

6. Conti…
• For them , reading is a neutral act that takes place
in historical or cultural vacuum.
• In all literary works form is primary and content is
secondary: form the element that is the meaning
generating source.
• A literary work has a single objective and definite
meaning. Every reader taking into account specific
images or other linguistic features of a poem would
arrive at the same meaning. A new interpretation
must reject the old one.
Critics who focus on the text only and form are
divided into two groups or Schools of thought:

7. The fugitive and New Criticism
• New Critics : T. S. Eliot’s “Tradition and Individual
Talent”.
• The Fugitive: Group of Scholars working in University
of Vanderbilt: John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn
Warren, Allan Tate, Cleanth Brooks: Brooks and
Warren: An appreciation to literature (1936) . Brooks:
Understanding Poetry (1939), Understanding Fiction
(1947), Understanding Drama (1948). Caroline
Cordona and Allan Tate’s anthology The House of
Fiction
• Focus on form, close-reading method, search for order.
A work is a self-sufficient object with formal elements
and laws of its own

8. Conti…
• Eliot led the revolt against author-centered
interpretations of a poem. He argued that a poem is
an ‘autonomous object’ and should be judged as
such. He propounded his impersonal theory of
poetry in which he asserted that poetry is not
‘turning loose of emotions but an escape from
emotions’. Personal emotions have to be changed
into artistic emotions to be expressed in a poem. A
poet’s mind acts as a catalyst which gives disparate
feelings, emotions and thoughts in ‘artistic wholes’
or poems but remains absent from the product.
Greatness of a work of art depends upon the
intensity of the poetic process not intensity of
personal emotions.

9. Conti…
• Personal emotions can be changed into artistic
emotions by using certain situations, objects,
myths or past literary texts as objective
correlative— “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 experience
is automatically evoked”.

10. I. A Richards and Practical Criticism
• I. A. Richards’ Principles of Literary Criticism (1924) and
Practical Criticism: A Study of literary Judgment (1929).
• I. A Richards gave undergraduate students poems for
evaluation without titles and authors. He wanted them
to analyze them on the basis of their intrinsic worth
rather than biographical details. He devised close-reading
technique to appreciate a literary work. Though solely
text-oriented and single scientific meaning approach of
New Critics has become irrelevant now, their method of
supporting the argument with evidence from the text is
used by modern theories as Feminism, Marxism, New
Historicism etc. Close reading technique is their valuable
contribution to literary theory.
• Author…………….Text………….Reader

11. Formalism
• Formalists:
• They carried out linguistic-based studies of literary text—predominantly
poetic ones.
• They were systematic and scientific in their analyses
• They were interested not in ‘literary’ but literariness
• Literariness means the features that make a text literary. They were
interested in formal features such as sounds, images, rhyme, rhythm,
symbols, figures, syntax, meter and narrative devices etc. for driving
meanings of a poem. These devices estrange or defamiliarize things by
‘deforming’ ordinary language in various ways to refresh our stale, or
‘automated’ responses.
• They minutely analyzed sounds and other features. So the method was fit
for shorter poems not longer ones or fictional ones. In fiction they studied
setting, plot, characters, irony and point of view and modes of narration
etc.
For them everything, even a full stop or comma contributes to the
meaning and effect of a poem. Any change results in a different poem.

12. Close-Reading Method
Word Choice – Most authors have very specific intentions in
deciding to use one word over another. It is important to look up
the definitions of any strange or unfamiliar words in order to
understand their significance.
Structure – Pay careful attention to the structure of the passage.
Notice any abrupt changes, which the author could be using to
signify important moments within the text. E.g Cohesion and
coherence
Imagery – Specific descriptions can offer important insight into a
passage, whether it is of characters, objects, or a landscape.
Many authors use imagery patterns to emphasize crucial details.
Syntax – Just as word usage is important, so is the systematic
way in which the words are arranged. Authors might try to make
subtle points by the way in which he or she constructs their
sentences.

13. Conti…
Literary Devices – These can range anywhere from
metaphors to allusions to irony. Take careful note,
because they can highlight important themes and
recurring motifs.
Context – Pay attention to how the passage or
individual sentences within it work in conjunction with
the surrounding text. Often times context can alter the
meaning of the passage.
Tone – It is important to recognize a writer’s tone
because it can often be used to convey emotion that
may not become evident after a superficial reading.

14. Conti…
Strange or Surprising Statements/Deviation – It may seem
obvious, but any piece of information that seems striking or
out of the ordinary was likely written that way for a reason.
If something does not seem to line up, do your best to piece
together why this might be.
Rhythm (mostly in poetry) – Sometimes even the sound of
lines or phrases can hold significance.
Paradoxes and ambiguities- paradoxes, ambiguities and
antithetical statements also play crucial role in generating
meaning in the text.
Punctuation- Punctuation marks in text especially in poetry
is highly significant in imparting meanings to the text.

15. Limitations
• They even examined fictional texts as poetic texts.
• Their view of poetic language as deviation from a norm is
an illusion as one’s norm may be other’s deviation.
• They ignore that meanings are not-stable entity. They vary
from person to person, time to time, culture to culture.
• Our judgments are coloured by “concealed structure of
values” called ideologies which are “modes of feeling,
valuing, perceiving and believing which have some kind of
relation to the maintenance and reproduction of social
power” (Eagleton). We unconsciously internalize them and
consider them natural. Readers bring their own meanings
to a literary text. Meanings are not inherent in a text.
• So literary texts cannot be studied in isolation or be treated
as an island cut off from other discourses

16. Conclusion
• New Critics and Formalists broke with
traditional critical practices and studied literary
texts in a systematic way. They brought the
literary text into limelight. But their views had
limitations and glaring flaws. However, their
method of Literary Analysis may be termed as
close-reading method (textual analysis)—word
by word and phrase by phrase—has survived in
prevalent perspectives today.

17. References
Dobie, A. B. (2012). Theory into practice: An
introduction to literary criticism. Boston:
Wadsworth.
Eagleton, T. (1996). Literary Theory: An
Introduction. London: Blackwell

18. Thank You