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    New Criticism and Formalism

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    bela2011
    This document provides an overview of New Criticism and Russian Formalism, two literary theories that emerged in the early-to-mid 20th century. [1] New Criticism focused on close reading of textual elements like imagery and symbolism, rejecting biographical context. [2] Russian Formalism emphasized analyzing the form and technique of a work above its content or context. [3] Both theories aimed for objective literary analysis and highlighted ambiguity and multiple interpretations in texts.

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    New Criticism and Formalism

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    bela2011
    4K views25 pages
    This document provides an overview of New Criticism and Russian Formalism, two literary theories that emerged in the early-to-mid 20th century. [1] New Criticism focused on close reading of textual elements like imagery and symbolism, rejecting biographical context. [2] Russian Formalism emphasized analyzing the form and technique of a work above its content or context. [3] Both theories aimed for objective literary analysis and highlighted ambiguity and multiple interpretations in texts.

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    This document provides an overview of New Criticism and Russian Formalism, two literary theories that emerged in the early-to-mid 20th century. [1] New Criticism focused on close reading of textual elements like imagery and symbolism, rejecting biographical context. [2] Russian Formalism emphasized analyzing the form and technique of a work above its content or context. [3] Both theories aimed for objective literary analysis and highlighted ambiguity and multiple interpretations in texts.

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    New Criticism and Formalism

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    bela2011
    This document provides an overview of New Criticism and Russian Formalism, two literary theories that emerged in the early-to-mid 20th century. [1] New Criticism focused on close reading of textual elements like imagery and symbolism, rejecting biographical context. [2] Russian Formalism emphasized analyzing the form and technique of a work above its content or context. [3] Both theories aimed for objective literary analysis and highlighted ambiguity and multiple interpretations in texts.

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    New Criticism and

    Russian Formalism

    The text The text


    The text
    Only the poem itself
    Time/Period
    • From late 1920s to 1970s
    • Flourished during the 1940s and 1950s,
    and are still in evidence today

    • Reaction against traditional Criticism


    which is highly impressionistic

    • Method: Close reading/intensive reading


    Major Arguments/Positions
    • A work of literature is autonomous
    New Critics treat a work of literature as if it
    were a self-contained, self-referential object.
     Focus on elements of the text (character,
    setting, imagery, conflict, plot, rhythm and
    rhyme)
     Consider that texts contain ambiguity,
    paradox, ironies, oppositions which lead to
    various interpretations
    Historical Background & Assumptions
    • New Criticism arose in opposition to
    biographical or vaguely impressionistic
    approaches
    • It sought to establish literary studies as an
    objective discipline
    • Texts possess meaning in and of themselves;
    therefore, analyses should emphasize
    intrinsic features rather than extrinsic ones.
    Extrinsic Intrinsic
    Extrinsic Intrinsic
    • Context • The words in the text
    • The era of composition • The structural
    • The author organization/internal
    • The reader’s emotional pattern/interrelationship
    response
    •
    Major Figures of New Criticism
    • I. A. Richards, T. S. Eliot,
    • Cleanth Brooks, David Daiches,
    • William Empson, Murray Krieger,
    • John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate,
    • F. R. Leavis, Robert Penn Warren,
    • W. K. Wimsatt, R. P. Blackmur,
    • Rene Wellek, Ausin Warren, and
    Ivor Winters.
    Key Terms
    • Intentional Fallacy
    • Affective Fallacy
    • Heresy of Paraphrase
    • Close reading
    Key Terms
    • Intentional Fallacy - equating the meaning of a
    poem with the author's intentions.
    • Affective Fallacy - confusing the meaning of a
    text with how it makes the reader feel. A reader's
    emotional response to a text generally does not
    produce a reliable interpretation.
    • Heresy of Paraphrase - assuming that an
    interpretation of a literary work could consist of a
    detailed summary or paraphrase.
    • Close reading - "a close and detailed
    analysis of the text itself to arrive at an
    interpretation without referring to historical,
    authorial, or cultural concerns".
    Strength

    • Deserve great credit for making us become


    more careful and serious readers

    • A deeper appreciation of the multiple uses of


    language that a text uses
    Critique/Drawbacks
    • Reduction of literature to one or a few
    rhetorical devices (Irony, paradox, tension
    or texture)
    • This alone or together do not a poem make
    • Affective fallacy- No work of literary art can
    be divorced from the reader and therefore
    from the reader’s response
    Russian
    Formalism

    Focus on Form
    Art as Technique
    Russian Formalism
    • Emphasis on the form of the work
    • Form-the organization of the material . . .
    for the creation of the total effect.
    “Art entails form; form takes many forms”
    • What the work says and how it says it are
    inseparable issues(form and Content)
    • Art for art’s sake
    Time/Period
    • Formalists - the critics and theorists
    working in Russia (actually, the Soviet
    Union) in the 1910s and 1920s
    • the Stalinist regime suppressed it in the
    early 1930s
    Prominent Figures
    • Roman Jakobson "Linguistics and Poetics"
    • Jan Makarovisky
    • Yuri Tynyanov "On Literary Evolution"
    • Victor Shklovsky Art as Technique/“Theory of Prose”
    • Boris Eichenbaum Theory of the Formal Method
    • Vladimir Propp Morphology of the Folktale
    Tenets
    • Formalists introduced the distinction between what
    they called "syuzhet" and "fabula"--roughly
    translated as "discourse" and "story"--that is, the
    distinction between the abstract storyline (fabula)
    and the virtually infinite number of ways in which
    that story can be "plotted" (discourse).
    • emphasizes the "form" of a text rather than its
    content. Formalist critics also tend to eschew
    discussion of any elements deemed external to the
    text itself (history, politics, and biography).
    • Text as Object: The text should be studied
    as an object unto itself without consider of
    the effects on the reader or the author’s
    intentions or it historical context.
    • Ambiguity: Texts contain moments in which
    meaning is not clear, when interpretation is
    questioned
    Defamiliarization
    • The technique of art is to make objects
    ‘unfamiliar’
    • Everyday language, which serves simply to
    communicate information, is stale and
    unimaginative.
    • The habitual nature of everyday experience
    makes perception stale and automatic, but art
    exists that one may recover the sensation of life;
    it exists to make one feel things, to make the
    stone stony.
    Literary language vs. Ordinary Language
    • Literary language as self-focused: its
    function is not to make extrinsic references,
    but to draw attention to its own "formal"
    features
    • The primary function of ordinary language
    as communicating a message, or
    information, by references to the world
    existing outside of language.
    Key Terms
    • Estrangement/defamiliarization: making the
    familiar strange, novel and exciting.
    • Art should give us back a fresh view of a
    world grown dull by habit
    Advantage
    • formalists seek to be objective in their
    analysis
    Advantage
    • caused the reader to see a familiar object
    or experience from a completely new
    perspective.
    Drawbacks
    • Focus on ‘form’
    • The text as a completely ahistorical
    • The formalist approach reduces the
    importance of a text’s historical, biographical,
    and cultural context.
    Quotes
    • Makarovsky wrote: "Art is not a copy of
    nature, but the determination to distort
    nature in accordance with its reflections in
    the individual consciousness".
    • Victor Shklovsky, in his famous essay "Art as
    Technique," offers his notion of defamiliarization.
    • Art takes that which is familiar and "makes it
    strange," slowing down the act of perception and
    making the reader see the world in new ways
    Go ahead…
    experiment with
    different approaches
    to literary criticism!
    End of presentation
    Thank you for attending
    attentively

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