The Massachusetts Review, Inc.

After the New Criticism Author(s): Murray Krieger Reviewed work(s): Source: The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Autumn, 1962), pp. 183-205 Published by: The Massachusetts Review, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25086964 . Accessed: 24/11/2011 22:13
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Murray

Krieger

After

the New

Criticism

Since proaches
tion that about

be discussing movements in literary criticism or ap I shall to literary criticism, let me begin by making a candid reserva
movements It is really and approaches, no more than even a if it threatens and a to undo tautology: all commonplace

follows.

that we find a critic to be good simply where his sensibility and penetra tion make him a good critic, and that the history of our criticism is filled with examples of good critics operating out of shamefully inadequate or seriously inconsistent theoretical assumptions and of dunces who have tied themselves to promising critical systems, even if they could produce
only mechanistic parodies of them. Indeed, our recent experience with

a major, the so-called New Criticism makes us wonder whether if a one movement of not function critical be the suicidal of may unhappy, in search of reductive providing a refuge for those unoriginal minds,
certainty, who manage to destroy it through unconscious parody. What

greater harm might they do on their own ! said this much, I still intend to trace the several theoretical Having directions being taken by American academic criticism in the wake (and I use "wake" advisedly) of the once vital New Criticism. I must hope that it isworth enquiring anew about what literature can be and what it can do, that less harm can come from enquiry than from the failure to
enquire. an For, however helpless a theory may be to turn an insensitive

critic into a responsive

adequate and

one, still it is not unreasonable

theory is better than an

to maintain
inadequate

that
and

consistent

inconsistent one;
This state and essay the to is an the

that if we must
extensive

have movements
a brief literary Literature,

it isworth
sketch

trying to

immediate first

presented

prospects Conference

of development of American in Modern

State University in the Spring of 1961. The lished by Michigan State University Press.

of the present which I criticism, at held Michigan

Proceedings

have been pub

183

The Massachusetts
improve literature movements worthy their directions, fare hope who under even the if we best have of no

Review
illusions and about even how if the well best those our of un

may can followers

them,

to flourish will use

only long it, or rather

enough abuse

to nourish it, to death.

Nor,
cism (or us

I believe,
what I

ismuch
have

dispute
elsewhere

likely over the claim that New

termed "contextualism") has

Criti
about

been done
about it has too to to become

to death. For
see how strong fashionable In these

some time now,

a reaction to attack, we too theory to unsettle as an as to

all we
it has

have had to do is look

been as find setting it was the in.2 Of to join late not

fashionable

long get

ago. back

attacks literary

to where

frequently was several

crank's ago,

decades

anxiety before

it

was
and the

rudely
remake need to

interrupted
the treat recent New

by the New
past, Criticism

Criticism.
its graves

This
and

desire

to blot out
reflects accident

unfortunate

its legacy, historical

that did not ruffle essential theoretical issues. But we shall see that it did ruffle them, many of them that needed ruffling, and that it resettled some of them into substantial theoretical gains. Consequently, the New Critical movement leaves behind it notions that will never allow us
to wish and look an more at poetics again in naivete to our the old upon moving way unless?as So to try some it might to give do?we be want to ourselves. ahead,

unnecessary conducive

preferable, the New Criti

cism its due as we try to think our way through and beyond it. Still, examples of outright rejection abound. Karl Shapiro's shockingly gross
work, In Defense of Ignorance (1960), a minor, is of course an extreme repre

sentative,
which expressing criticism, document. moderate 2 Hyatt implications in

as is Randall
1952 a but may poet's which have

Jarrell's much
seemed

earlier "The Age

irritation dissident, over our

of Criticism,"3
voice with central more obsession into a

anti-academic

understandable seems are tone, of are was now course not

to have many much the essay,

been others

revitalized who, if

There in their H.

somewhat denials.4 extent

less first

persistent to recognize Current

in their the Revolt

Waggoner of this reaction

among in his

and

the the

"The

against

New Criticism," Criticism, I (1959), 211-225. 3 In Poetry and the Age (New York, 1953),
Review in Partisan peared 4 See Walter Sutton's of Aesthetics and Art in two 1952. socially-based ("The attacks Contextualist on

70-95.

It originally

ap

contextualism Dilemma?or

in Journal Fallacy,"

Criticism

XVII (1958), 219-229, and "Contextualist Theory and Criticism as a Social Act," XIX (1961), 317-325) and Mark Spilka's qualified application of Mr.
Sutton's Fiction approaches, notion Studies, see in "The VI the Necessary (1960-61), belligerence Stylist: 283-297. of George a New For Steiner Critical more in his Revision," generally Tolstoy Modem antagonistic or Dostoev

184

After
Not too many as a still the satisfied of that these attackers

theNew Criticism
have be spent, may entity independent to wish the New Criticism away after. in what is to come Accordingly, as a defensive Criticism has provoked, tried side. Some stalwarts among the New as an

its existence

increasing

significant tide

force shaping of anti-New on the other

gesture,

intransigence

Critics have been most reluctant to yield any ground so hard-won by in its days of glory?ground their movement long ago consolidated and in for some time slipping away. But their reticence is understandable, to the break Critics anti-New of the view of the long-standing desire poetic context open completely, to let all aesthetic values leak out in the
process, to restore an interest in "content" within a restored "form

the least opening in the monistic content" dualism. Thus entity may, with the help of such opposition, lead to the outpouring of all that these
last decades have and as textualism, New Critics salvaged the consequent for literature. No anti-historicism, all-or-nothing wonder, are affairs. then, defended that by con some

uncompromising,

Some inflexibility of this sort appears in certain of the later sections and Cleanth Brooks' Literary Criticism: A of William K. Wimsatt's
Short History. Ren? Wellek can be more strenuous. In an essay entitled

"Literary Theory,
theoretical ing on the incurable

Criticism,
for relativism

and History,"
the good and thus reasons the

he displays an unrelenting
I have non-aesthetic observed?insist reductionism

firmness?and

of even
and of

those historicisms which

self-conscious literary claim must that

claim a high degree

(such as the

of sophistication
historicism of an

awareness

Erich Auerbach
up no part document is an of the it as there

or of a Roy Harvey
the and accordingly separateness

Pearce).
study be of

Mr. Wellek
of literature that, between

dares give
must treat consequently, historical

historical

uncritical; function

unbridgeable

scholarship and criticism, even if each has need of the other in order as partisan theorist is forced to to operate properly. But ifMr. Wellek
resist, Mr. Wellek he now as astute historian ready for knows history he cannot. on Despite past his re calcitrance, seems to move the New

Criticism.

In a recent essay,5 he both defends New (New York,

and of Ikon: John Milton the

Criticism

as the final

sky; an Essay in the Old Criticism

ert Martin his satt Adams, nastiness

1959) and the work of Rob

the Modern criticism Critics (Ithaca,

195 5), Strains of Discord:

evasive and Cleanth "The Main

Studies in Literary Ofenness

history or Handmaid "Queen

(Ithaca,

1958),
K. Wim Hudson

or

in treating in his Brooks

by William of the Arts?" Yale referred

Review, X (1957), 5
(1961), 102-118,

282-287.
of Twentieth-Century 114-115. pp. especially Criticism," The essay LI Review, to earlier,

Trends

185

The Massachusetts

Review

word and admits that further and different words must be forthcoming: "The New Criticism?whose basic insights seem to me valid for poetic
theory?has, no doubt, reached a point a of exhaustion." For, he goes on,

it has "not been able to avoid the dangers

imitation. There seems time for change."

of ossification
Such a change

and mechanical
may require

as partisan flexible view of the role of history than Mr. Wellek to grant?perhaps out of a proper fear that he cannot has been willing give up a part without losing all. as his, the extreme and stultify Still, with such an acknowledgment ing position of simply calling for more New Criticism is left as a refuge for lesser minds. This direction is clearly unpromising since it has al words, again, it "has, no ready been fully explored. In Mr. Wellek's
doubt, tioners reached with a point of exhaustion." energies, who Yet press there their remain uncritical many practi inexhaustible acceptance

a more

the obvious of this direction into dogma. They do not acknowledge that infects all successful ailment of over-ripeness and institutionalization movements: that which freezes a dynamic theory into fashionable
mechanics, transforms an ever-responsive organicism to a single formula

imposed, indiscriminately straw men suggesting it is poetic

to suffer from the vicissitudes of

its fashionable justice

fashion.

favorites and unfashionable for the movement itself now

But, thanks to a time lag, our

universities
criticism the many

and some of the journals which

and

have opened

themselves
encourage

to

recently self-consciously, only indiscriminately of The Method. uncreative practitioners

The
suffered

serious and beneficial

from the misunderstandings

aspects of the New

and

Criticism

have
the

long
paro

distortions?indeed

by its more heated followers as well as by its more that it is necessarily opponents. Its enemies have complained in its and anti-historical of denial intentionalism ; that, in anti-scholarly the tradition of Part four Party it is intent on obliterating poetry's rela tion to life, society, morality, by shutting itself off by itself; that it is mental and verbal gymnastics performed out of sheer exhibitionism by dies?of heated it created
Alexandrian of embattled creatures academic out of The Dunciad. seen And extra-aesthetic as an motives agent of liberals have the movement

"Literary

Theory,

Criticism,

and

LXVIII
satt

(1960),
his he

1-19. While
own summary

this essay was awaiting publication, Mr. Wim

and critique of late tendencies in criticism,

History,"

appeared

in Sewanee

Review,

published

"Horses of Wrath: Recent Critical Lessons," Essays in Criticism, XII

1-17. What aware and says there instructive of confirms the still of him here among placement defenders of New-Critical unyielding my

(1962),
the most gains.

186

After
political and philosophic
to tradition and to absolute and social-democracy like most But, friends than from

theNew Criticism
reaction:
values

in its resort to miracle

they have seen a threat humanism. seen its this followers one suffer too

and its appeal

to progressive more

to secular, we as

naturalistic have of

movements, enemies,

from con

many

obligingly

formed to these mistaken

scholarship, committing

definitions. Often
consequent errors

they did disdain history and

of recklessness. Often they

did resort to an aestheticism that concerned itself exclusively with the a literary art that was of upon interpretive display virtuosity performed cut ofif from life, making of criticism an exercise, a sort of jig-saw puz
zle the where acclaim. the more And and the more pieces too the often position minute was the used, the greater pieces to not the satisfy

demands political

of the literary conscience, but to justify certain conservative and religious commitments; and this despite the fact that, strangely enough, the doctrine itself, in its appeal to the containing ten and even Manichaean sions of irresolution, is beyond commitment in its implications.6 as below But below these unhappy parodies of the New Criticism, the less creative practitioners holding on to it for dear life, it has a serious
continuing claim to our theoretical interest and respect. This claim

and

is rooted in what I assume to be its residual first principle, the contex tualism that makes its best theorists?Mr. Wellek and Messrs. Wimsatt
and Brooks, among those I have noted?anxious to protect it even in

the face of the unsympathetic march of history. Let me try to summa rize this principle briefly. It holds that each literary work must, as liter
ature and not another thing, strive to become a self-sufficient system of

symbols that comes to terms with itself. In effect the system is a unique "new word" of which Mallarm? defi philology?the spoke?whose nition is provided by the many old words as they together shut off their reader system. This shutting off compels the submissive and knowing toward being utterly contained by the work, despite the fact that its
ideas, rately, tainment its use seem may of conventional techniques, and Let occur to be directed rarely extramurally. if ever actually its very us admit even with words, that this taken utter sepa con

the most

attentive

of us, especially in long works. Still the critic can claim to discover the work's capacity to contain us, if only?less limited by our idiosyncrasies were and our propensity to distraction?we freer to comply with its demands.
6 I argue

Finally,
extensively

however,
for

this autonomous

system, with
of

its terminal
in

the Manichaean

The Tragic Vision (New York,

implications

contextualism

1960), 238-268.

187

The Massachusetts
and from intramural going out relations to the world that make of ordinary

Review
it complete meanings, and work to keep us ordi

ordinary

logic,

nary ideas, has its special value in illuminating our world of experience : the complexity of these internal relations allows the literary work to be
faithful tional course or to the actual stuff of our "pre-analytic" and thus as dramatic yet lead no pre-ideological?yes, can be. The contradictory pressure after traps since existential?experience the forces, the work, the totally. pre-proposi other dis whose to no

tensions, us tensions

simultaneous the other world

us within they to confront reflect

outward that

discourse

all, can afford

existential

the In effect, all this is to claim for the successful literary whole a reflect in world which enclosed faceted miracle mirrors, by endlessly
ing and do their again again from re-reflecting work?so that is transformed?even images, the mirrors somehow but before as become them the mirrors still opening never us off windows that world shut that tenor

our upon can appear it. Is this union

world; everyday to us as it did not in really the transfer

through the mirrors of every

originally

the miracle of

substantive

properties

metaphor between

achieves and vehi

cle? It is the miracle of meaning being not just in language or through once at but in and through language. language of the poem Of course, it must be admitted that the mirror-world
started before other for its us as system simple, can be unmagical to begin composed windows. close of upon elements For us, as we the that work relate enter the work, appears?like obviously and

discourse?to

to the world outside the walls. We approach the lan immediately as other it of the like if, poem operated as simple guage languages,
referential signs, leading us transparently to their objects. The test of

poetry
ing mural guage work us

(in its broad, Aristotelian

toward relations into has new a another among meanings way of its elements that right to

sense)
strong a

is whether
whether enough that own to

it ends by persuad
it builds transform intra its lan The its

apprehending,

create aspire

system to its

is self-sufficient. absolute oneness,

sovereign

unique
transfer

integrity,
of

like that of the sublime metaphor

incarnation?amazes as

whose
it baffles

substantive
us. And

properties?whose

the critic's function is to transfer us from sign to symbol by showing referential elements how the work relates the atomistic, independently us in that self-sufficient, mu with which it began, gradually enclosing
tually house to shut supporting us?whether the door. As system, or not reward the we "new actually if we do, word," have the that has the perseverance its windows capacity as readers to mirrors, to

it converts

188

After
mirrors which finally,

theNew

Criticism
open outward again for us

as enchanted

windows,

to an old world newly illumined. All this the extreme and pure and perhaps
contextualism often can should degenerate assert, into although formalism, in practice stopping

only consistent
New with the Critics

form of
all too

many-faceted

mirror without my
a

summary
and

getting through it at last to return to existence. I trust of this principle reveals the errors in both the misleading
defenses the theoretical the theoretical of contextualism, firmness advantage of and its more of reveals serious also de imita

attacks partial fenders.

justification For it alone

the misleading of has

escaping

tionism by finding
and It more far through?thus must also serious looked at. claim reason For

in the work
affording the for here

a unique
literature a

locus of meaning?at
unique function which we but in

once
culture. constitutes have must

in

correlative than that

worry is a theory

disadvantage the objections not only

thus pro

admits

claim
through,

as

its first
the mirror

principle
and the

its internal
window, a

contradiction,
poetic context

the
at

in and
once

the

closed

and uniquely open. I have pointed out at length in The New Apologists to which the inevitable theoretical dead-ends for Poetry unqualified this is the contextualism leads, although very aspect of the New Criti
cism what that makes it made the is a it new, appeal or at least different?and necessary, by have if uniquely theoretically to need useful. unsatisfying, the to unexplain seek alter It is to miracle for

in that able. natives One

substitute blame rationally

explanation who more *

cannot that were

theorists

appealing the felt

satisfying. * *

the simple call rejected as unpromising Having Criticism and the simple call for anti-New Criticism,
some inence more on promising the American alternative academic directions scene which during have these

for more I shall

come last into years,

New look at
prom in the

decline
tualism,

of the New
though some

Criticism.
may seem

None
not

of these totally
far from doing

dismisses
so; but even

contex
these

do their work in a sophisticated awareness of its claims. And those which try to be faithful to contextualism go beyond it rather than being to be it. It should useful examine these alternatives and their trapped by
relation to the contextualist principle.

three major directions here: the first uses techniques and come to be called philosophic of what has assumptions analysis; the sec concern the to myth criti with cultural that leads ond, anthropology

I find

189

The Massachusetts
cism; tialism and and the of third, the concepts and attitudes

Review
of contemporary by Ernst Existen Cassirer.

neo-Kantianism

represented

Northrop Frye is the major figure in both the first two directions. For I find two Northrop Fryes: the Northrop Frye who is the tran above intra-positional scendent methodologist strife and the Northrop
Frye who espouses a single position?i.e., the catholic analytic philoso

pher and the proponent

of myth

criticism. Let I.

us take these in turn.

the

total

organization

of

his

monumental

work,

Anatomy

of

Criticism
flect an

(1957),
unpartisan

and its justification

universality and

in the "Polemical
inclusiveness,

Introduction"
with mutually

re

a concern

exclusive perspectives and the limitations they place upon subject-matter and definition, that suggest the procedures of modern analytic philoso phy. In the book there are brilliant analyses of possible positions, includ
ing from among them something very like contextualism in the earlier por

tions of his Theory

an uncommitted

of Symbols,
catholicity

the second of his four theories. Arguing

of view, he examines the various partial

perspectives,
what each

analyzing
must leave

them in detail, seeing what

out, and banning a any

each can include and

to establish any

attempt

one of them exclusively.

that poetic this procedure, can value, the be of

As

an analytic
of merit,

philosopher
single can

might,

he denies
source can for be

establishment "scientific"

as the theory be "empirical,"

Indeed, he must anything more than tautological. tated by anything more than mere subjective whim.
so much as with as an many argument of the for not the having only any. With question is one analysts,

deny that it is dic So his is no theory

this Northrop of method, Frye, not of

substance.7 And of course both dismiss the possible validity of judgment, even though for the sublunary practicing critic aesthetic judgment would seem to be his crucial activity, if he takes as his primary function
the guidance and improvement of taste. Mr. Frye makes the most of the

similarities between the scientist's creation of a theory to account for his data (the order of nature) and the literary theorist's creation of a the
7 Mr. to use that other weapon is too poetically keen in the modern Frye arsenal their lan obsession with which, upon drawing "ordinary to the emotive. in extraordinary It is language relegates anything recent who of reveals the influence this aspect of Foster strongly

analysts' guage," Richard

analytic philosophy. See his imputation of mystical

(and philosophically

irre

as "The to the New in such articles Criticism Romanticism motives sponsible) as collected in The and "Criticism Criticism" of the New Poetry," recently a New Criticism the New Romantics: (Bloomington, of 1962). Reaffraisal

190

After
ory to account
these in the jects value befits similarities natural of value is their the to order, and, most to override the

theNew Criticism
(the order
an all-important in literature that they are

for his data

of literature).
difference: are expressly

But
unlike

he allows
objects as ob their It ill to

objects the extent

created literary, cause.

theorist,

important to then,

characteristic, ignore that value,

successfully their necessary to set himself

so as not

account
phenomena.

for it, and to treat only the mere

Here Mr. Frye's scientism fails.

happening

of literature

as his

awarenesses Mr. Frye gives us is most the set of multiple the that in it permits humbling experience of seeing our intel helpful and their limitations from perspectives outside our lectual commitments a vista. Just own, I fear that most of us cannot afford so Olympian as the analytic philosophers still leave substantive philosophy to be done, so this Northrop Frye still leaves critical theory to be done by those of While
us who yond must, prolegomena. for the sake of letters, be partisans, who must move be

II.
but MR. frye himself is a partisan. In treating the second major

called archetypal or myth is commonly criticism, I direction, what to be an seems to him be this dominant the find figure, although again of posi other Northrop Frye who, despite his catholic transcendence this the And is readers himself. his tions, pronounces Northrop Frye the the think of, though perhaps first, may finally?or other, usually more second is the difficult to reckon with. This theoretically?be not And of the it is of all, much, Anatomy? Northrop Frye though the Mr. Frye of many articles calling for a myth criticism.9
Mr. guage, analogous Frye a conceives single order of all literature collectively as an order of of mathe lan the autonomous of nature world-order, mythic with which science independent Like the deals.

matical world
equivalents, Mr. Frye?must

it resembles,
logics, causations. have

the order of language

Yet, as Mr. Frye or the

has its own

the "total analyst?the dream

tables of
first of man"

it, the world-vision

which
cal?in

literature "imitates"
short, of

has nothing

in it of the factual or metaphysi

we fall into the error of "ex

"knowledge"?unless

8
and

Especially of the third essay on Archetypal Criticism or Theory

and Anagogic Phases as I have mentioned, to the New Criticism, of the second essay on the Literal-Descriptive though

of Myths,

the Mythical of which, Symbols, Phases 9 seem In many close

the Theory of and Formal

"Myth,

the most lucid ways and Displacement," Fiction,

so. condescendingly perhaps is among recent: the most helpful Daedalus 587-605. (Summer, 1961), and

191

The Massachusetts
istential projection." He warns against this

Review
error (and do not Cassirer

and his followers

the dream and

fall into it?)

it to

of thrusting
our

the myth
reality. At

outward
once mystic

from
and

allowing

constitute

positivist, at once sympathetic and brilliant student of Blake and writer of the "Polemical he proclaims both the glory and the Introduction," sees it much like the Blakean limitations of the literary world-as-myth,
or Yeatsian "system," but without their grandiose cognitive and meta

sys physical claims. This mythic order of language is the autonomous tem of which the individual work partakes and, in effect, to which it refers. And criticism is to deal with nothing less than this total order.
For are the not proper what he objects of Mr. disdainfully " There of discrete 'works.' pile must be dealt since all phenomena order of words." As science does order of words criticism must Frye's terms "a are with with criticism, in aggregate huge to be no unique only the "the "as order parts of of science, its aping or miscellaneous "phenomena" a whole," "an with total this coher

of

nature, of

make

assumption

ence,"
ever cost tinuity?of Mr.

of a single,
to the the Frye,

"totally

intelligible

body of knowledge,"
that most precious

at what
discon

singleness?and, discrete work.10 then, can predicate

consequently,

autonomy

not

of

the

single

work

as

entity but of the literary-mythic

it the

universe

to which

it refers and which

through nothing whose sign-sym

that is a theory finds His translates. meaning archetypally can be not there and since in work it, through only, a that it translation in is the work; is, since, "imitative," unique essence bol as or has its locus elsewhere. He need not since worry his about entire so any

referential-contextual is the autonomous

mythic,

dichotomy unit?non-referential

universe, literary as we avoid long

the error of "existential

cation of this theory,

projection."
it not

For

all the brilliance

literature to the

and sophisti
same way of

does

return

as old imitation-theory had it, with only the referent changed meaning itself cannot ?however important this change may be? The work create through its symbolic system, through these words in this order;
it can his walls body order only not refer around or to something the work extramural, but around literature in the since that Mr. Frye constructs autonomous The entity. the order of system see litera collective, a generic that way on a

of works of language is, these

order being

of works: autonomous work

as

mathematics 10

the

single

is as

dependent

coherent

For

statements in my

on

the

scientific 15-17.

of Criticism Anatomy ture to mathematics

(Princeton, following

1957),

paragraph,

comparison see 350-354. Anatomy,

obligations For the

of

criticism, of

192

After
its system. There case. All can of be

theNew Criticism
equation
containment, collabora So is if for

that leads into and out of it as is the single mathematical

no discontinuity, together voluntary no comprises contextual a gigantic in either tive we literature altogether unique,

on

enterprise, ask where

a not the

untranslatable,

joint-stock autonomous

company. context

Mr.
it to

Frye, we
this mystical,

find

that in denying
Blakean entity,

it to the single work,

the mythic order of

he attributes
literature as a

universal way
guage ever-varying

of envisioning
and yet

or imaging
always the

and transcribing

into a lan

same.

This second Mr. Frye throws his shadow back upon the first and makes us qualify our view and judgment of him. For all the varying
perspectives upon literature the first allowed, we now see he allowed

it on the assumed analogy that criticism is to the order of language as science is to the order of nature. That is to say, the first Mr. Frye's exhaustive collection of "theories" ultimately springs, not from empirical
analysis of the data, but from the Blakean mystique?however incon

sistent it may
persuade us

be with
of?that

the hard-headed
there exists one

positivistic
mythic

approach
linguistic

he tries to
order from

it returns in whose "still center" all literature radiates and to which its imitation of "the total dream of man" pp. 117-119). (Anatomy, to Blake colors his grand view of the And this central allegiance
"theories" and makes it partial only, since it bypasses, or rather pre

cludes, the critical judgment of each single context as unique. Thus his treatment of "Symbol as Monad" in the exciting and even apocalyptic in which section on the "Anagogic Phase," language becomes its own
universe, makes merely supercilious his suggestion of contextualism

within

in the more modest "Formal Phase," literary work in which "Symbol" does not extend beyond the contained "Image." It is precisely the all-embracing aspect of the system, its total ambi that makes it tion, finally specious, if strikingly impressive and even the single
What us, the if the more do modest not and make traditional this mystical practitioners assumption non-Blakeans,

spectacular. among

about

the transcendent
that seems to

unity
appeal

of the sanctified
to religious mystery

body

of

literature?an
than the ex

assumption

more

Critics, even though, it is true, our first and more must Mr. positivistic Frye deny any final cognition to this body? What we if rather think that literature must be like all other discourse until creates itself as otherwise it makes itself otherwise, through its own workings? otherwise, That its obligation to its proper nature is to make itself as our obligation as critics is to discover what it has made of

tremest claim of New

193

The Massachusetts
itself, and how, and with what
here we would to mean those collectively only "discrete a

Review

value for the rest of us? By "literature"

handy name, that not would itself really an entity, concern to refer us. We

works"

would

be restoring the referential-contextual opposition which Mr. Frye eliminates by removing all reference from the body of literature ?and from all language perhaps too, like the early I. A. Richards, except the rigorously scientific. We would be ("the order of words")
returned to the question about kinds of discourse, and to the considera

tion of what

the unique and individual poem instead of trying to deal with that grandiose
cannot of the the poem locate in time or space or even total poem?that of its singleness world-dream and criticism

can in its oneness we entity which

of in the unity or world-as-dream of its need to

create, cannot
our ex that evaluate.

specify, perience deprives

It is not surprising deed he must?since

literature of ability universals as one the order

that Mr. Frye can blandly dismiss judgment?in on his interest is always centered (still-centered)
and not in discontinuous dynamic, Here is a strange its workings. a loss of the concrete skeptic?and the on unpredict return for which to

poem unique for this modern

I had Criticism did so much and the celebration of which most would be its indispensable legacy. thought I should not turn from this direction without referring to two other both of whom and Hazard Adams, contributors to it, Edwin Honig the New
reveal much the same orientation as Mr. Frye. In his Dark Conceit;

the Making of Allegory (1959), Mr. Honig works to deny the con and for reasons textualist's distinction between symbol and allegory, that Mr. Frye should have helped make clear for us. For if one as
sumes ture that partakes there of is no the mythic referential-contextual order, refers to it, opposition imitates since it, then all there litera can

be no distinction between sign (or allegory) and symbol, and all litera can be only differences in de ture finally translates into allegory. There or how works and how explicitly gree concerning cryptically thoroughly and public allegory relate to this order, from the most conventional to the most private. The romantic may wish to dignify the latter with the name of symbolism in his disdain for the open intellectuality of ob thus apparently limits the notion of symbol vious allegory. Mr. Honig it to to what it meant for the French Symbolists instead of allowing
mean what it has meant for organic and contextualist theory. And for

him the New

he terms the "symbolist in fear of science and reference, has deluded himself in-retreat," who, into a justification of art in terms of a distinction that does not exist. Critic is the defensive creature

194

After
In dealing with
on these assumptions,

theNew Criticism
Honig achieves
I

specific works, Mr.

assumptions work Frye's on Blake

impressive
suspect will

results
stand

which,

however,

or fall with Mr.

Hazard hanced Adams' by Mr.

Frye's.
and since Yeats11 these two is of master course poets much en approach, dedicate

themselves to speaking the universal, perennial language. The question one could do as well by many is whether here, as with Mr. Frye, answer I have other poets who might be differently dedicated. The belief that is little indicates there my suggested justification for the un limited faith Mr. Adams Mr. toward system as the Frye's displays
critical cure-all in the conclusion to his review-summary of current

literary theory, "Criticism: Whence

* *

andWhither?"
*

I do not think that there is much more to be learned theoretically from other and less strenuous myth critics, those like Richard Chase and Stanley Edgar Hyman, who emphasize more nakedly the liberal and the anti-New-Critical Rather I would aspects of this movement. move on to a second and quite different direction within myth criticism, one that tries to come more completely through the New Criticism to The Burning Fountain is the monumental myth. Philip Wheelwright's work here. Mr. Wheelwright has long been an ally of New Criticism, and while he tries to move beyond it, he means to do so without violat ing its special orientation to poetry and its language. He treats litera
ture as a form of "expressive discourse" coordinate with myth, ritual,

and religion; he even?unlike Mr. Frye, them all to yield quite happily?allows come alternatives to "literal discourse"
his anti-positivism he leaves to the enemy,

and I think too easily and not truth." They be "expressive and "literal truth," which in
science.

Mr. Wheelwright studies of myth proceeds through anthropological and ritual, and their relations to religion and literature, trying to get at meaning of contextualism with his twin by way concepts of "depth and wants to use "radical He both the in and meaning" metaphor."12 11His book, Blake and Yeats: the Contrary Vision (Ithaca, 1955), and
"Yeatsian Art and Mathematic articles, Form," subsequent especially tennial IV (1960), I understand on 70-88. that a volume Review, shorter is now See also his "Criticism: Whence lyrics completed. Cen Blake's and

Whither?"

American Scholar, XXVIII

these

(1959),

226-238,

to which

reference

at the end of this ismade paragraph. 12 an extended For of critique own discussion of Mr. Wheelwright,

which has influenced concepts, my see Eliseo "A Semantic for Hu Vivas,

manists," Sewanee Review, LXIII

(1955),

307-317.

195

The Massachusetts
the through
meaning. the several ritual, But

Review
in ?nding
too large, too broad. way his

for his expressive

here he of fails: his varieties and

language
terms are

the

locus of
among

its

religion,

expressive language mean literature in the

analogies can How unless

same

myth, this mean

ing is not tied to language itself lation and significant play? He be "in and through . . ."?but for p. 48), Burning Fountain, so long as this way language"
literature. the same His several varieties most of way although at all?that

and its limitless possibilities for manipu does say that expressive meaning must "in and through the emotions" (The he cannot quite say "in and through of meaning is to apply to more than
of expressive are them and language not really language, must dependent tropistic mean upon lan in

language

is, controlled

figured

in and through it. guage, language that has its meaning here suffers from the difficulty which Mr. Wheelwright inevitably afflicts idealist poetics. In essential agreement with D. G. James, he wants "to accept this Coleridgean doctrine of the continuity between man's primary (or constitutive) (or imagination and his secondary
poetic) ing imagination the power, act words of in . visionary . ."13 But power then be of how if we attribute the creativity, can we or to man's allow creative symboliz con generally context? the poetic in a unique way? essential

stitutive these

perception, this order?to

symbolic

is In other words, if the distinction between symbol and non-symbol made before the act of making poetry, and if the symbol is attributed
to all human constitutive perception?and to its constitutive agency,

language?then symbol within

course. once Where, all Indeed,

no way is left to distinguish the act of language, within

there by there are, in effect, virtue special no its mere be the as

between symbol and non the various modes of dis

at all within is made symbolism discourse symbolic. of art,

varieties language,

then,

language, can

in-and-through

use except as an intensification by degree of the general ("through") of language? And here, where all language is given symbolic proper in kind between aes ties, with the consequent denial of a difference here Mr. is closest to thetic and non-aesthetic symbols, Wheelwright Mr. Frye and Mr. Honig. And here too, interestingly, he urges his one serious complaint against New Critical doctrine: that it emphasizes too exclusively the synthesizing power of the poetic imagination and 1, pp. Burning Fountain (Bloomington, 1954), 77. See Note 371-372, for his approval of D. G. James on Coleridge (in Scepticism and Poetry yLondon, 1937). I have criticized this view at length in The New Apologists for Poetry (Minneapolis, 1956), 98-110. 13The

196

After

theNew Criticism

poetic language at the expense of the imagination's broader powers. Mr. Wheelwright produces some exciting and revealing studies, and much contextualist studies, but I must ask, as I did of Mr. Frye, pretty
where the context must finally be for him?the unique, untranslatable,

autonomous
der" as well

context?
as

It cannot be in "the right words

them, as the in-and-through

in the right
contextualist

or

through

would have it. Let us try the expressive statement Mr. Wheelwright uses as example: "God exists" admit (pp. 292 ff.). Surely he would
this of through meaning and of a translation as a only, meaning not as an apart in meaning, from the since words. His it is capable answer

would
than a

likely be that,
correspondence

in accordance
theory, the

with

a coherence
has meaning

theory
only

rather
within

statement

the context of the experience or vision that thrusts enough. But we see where his context must be: not
structure of the work but in man's vision or experience

it forth. Good in the symbolic

that precedes

and transcends the work. theory, he gives us an

meaning This has poetics its essence becomes an

Despite his dismissal of the correspondence imitation theory still, in that the through
apologia for mysticism, for a vision or an

elsewhere.

a philosopher experience that claims truth on intuitive grounds. Though of language, Mr. Wheelwright has returned to Shelley's divine source, "the burning fountain" of Adonais that is his title, as he has returned to Shelley's extravagant Defence truth ends by of Poetry. Expressive source rather than its its upon depending upon linguistic form; it can even turn out to be a propositional claim to truth that Mr. Wheelwright does not want subjected to the rational critique to which we would normally demand it submit. It sets up shop across the street from the literal truth of science and arbitrarily claims certain exemptions. This
is not the place for to argue these claims; but they are vastly different from

the primary
embraces,

claim of this theorist who,

cognitive reasons, "the

in the spirit of contextualism,

thesis ... of the ontological

status of radical metaphor" It may be that myth criticism, (p. 97). moved by its inherent need to open the context of the literary work out
ward to a wider context, cannot with consistency come through the New

Criticism, since as myth criticism it must merge the language of poetry into a larger vision that not only precedes the poem but pre-empts it. III. for the third direction we might use that tired phrase, "the new of pure New meaning by it neither the non-historicism

historicism,"

197

The Massachusetts

Review

Criticism nor the old historicism of pre-New Criticism. It is an attempt, in accordance with certain notions derived from Existentialism and the
neo-Kantian Ernst Cassirer, to return literature to history and existence,

but to return
inexpressible?and vision. Literature,

it there by treating

it as the unique bearer of an otherwise

is seen and social, as a mode moral of re

unavailable?historical, perhaps as in historicism generally,

vealing culture, reading culture of literature.

The mention

but the relationship is turned on its head: instead of into literature, one discovers culture by reading it out
of neo-Kantianism, which was also an important in

fluence upon Mr. Wheelwright, reminds us of his difficulty in deciding between literary symbolism and the symbolism which is all language. For most of us, Cassirer is responsible for the notion that the mind in
its symbolizing he powers becomes a constitutive agent, that man consti

tutes his reality,

tures that

and a culture
and

its reality,
But the

through
idealist's

the symbolic
problem

struc

creates

it creates.

remains:

constitutes his reality through symbols, then how is literature is creative, then If all language constitutive? specially or differently how is the poem's context uniquely so? As in the consideration of Mr. we are aware of the problem of how to keep symbolism Wheelwright, on the from being too broad for literature and thus not dependent on as as not to the need be in it well dependent literary context, are we for to indebted the New Criticism that it is through it. And
this awareness. * * *

if man

divide in there are two approaches which Within this direction terms of this difficulty; for one sees literature merely as the bearer of creates the the historical vision and the other sees it as that which latter approach is the most dependent vision through its context. The to extend it of all we have observed: it wants upon contextualism without we saw trapped in violating its essential spirit. If those whom to the New Criticism unhappily continue emphasize only the closed
the unique nature of what our experience of the poetic context

mirror,

now would have this context also open ought to be, these other critics outward. It would open to the unique nature of what it can reveal of the pre-ideological world of man as he exists at an historical moment level?what his unanalyzed in culture at the felt, phenomenological to him. like is received his world-as-stimulus, world, existentially of his essays, es here is Eliseo Vivas?in The many important figure

198

After
pecially
ence,"

theNew
"existence."

Criticism
His key terms are "insist
indicate the three The prefixes

in "The Object
"insistence," and

of the Poem."14

to language and stages in the developing relation of historical meaning that is in that is under or before language, meaning poetry: meaning
the language of the poem, meaning that comes out of the poem into

our language generally. Accordingly, I would translate these, if I may as ( 1 ) meanings tear them from the context of Mr. Vivas' metaphysic, a and values potentially within culture though not yet analyzed, real ized in institutions, or perhaps even understood; and values as they are grasped in and through
structure of the poem, as the mirror-window,

(2) these meanings the total intramural

they can never

though

and values as they are and (3) these meanings appear thus elsewhere; to enter from the work culture by being translated and extracted
thinned for use.

For purposes of explication, I dare to oversimplify a single case. For in forces at work think of the indefinable subterranean "subsistence" the Renaissance. Some of these find their way into every facet of the Faustus. Here, and only here, this complex structure that isMarlowe's them absolute "insistence." If one wants the of achieves special grouping full array of these forces in their interrelations, he must come here for
them. But the cultural interest in ideology in an can abstract from the com

plex of forces
man" forces which can thus

in the play and come up with

it can use anywhere, Mr. Vivas' endless achieve "existence,"

the notion
variety though all sorts of of

of "Faustian
contexts. we must The still

return to the play for the whole

Let me expand a bit. In the and counter-pressures, impulses, become feelings operative

of what
Renaissance

it is to be Faust.
and pressures counter and them not yet

counter-feelings, in western culture,

impulses some of

they are oper recognized or identified, and surely not ordered. Yet the of level below and culture's there, institutions, ideologies atively though potentially they are a source of changes in both. Can they then be said to exist as yet? It depends on how we mean "exist." They do
exist in that, in some subterranean way, they are a functioning force

in culture, but they do not exist in that there is as yet no "they," since there is as yet no definition, no bracketing, of them to make them an them into official being. In Mr. Vivas' Ian entity, to institutionalize 14 In Creation and Discovery (New York, 1955). Among his other relevant
and in D. "What H. is a Poem?" Lawrence: the

see "Literature and Knowledge" essays, especially that volume and "The Constitutive from Symbol,"

Failure and Triumfh

of Art (Evanston, 1960).

199

The Massachusetts
guage,
a

Review

they "subsist." Now a cluster of these existentially functioning, non-entity "somethings" becomes aesthetically grasped and organized in
unique whole, a self-sufficient poetic context, Marlowe's Faustus. The

earlier Faustbook
bolic the structure container of and

bears certain sign-relations

language synthesizing and action of this these creator

to it, but in its total sym

Faustus resistant, becomes tensional at once forces.

use Mr. Vivas' to them. To It is both mirror of them and window the "insist" have their in and locus term, they poem only there. Now that the poet has grasped these data in their fullness and has displayed them to his culture, or in a sense created them for it, they can play a
more institutional role in that culture. The culture can extract from

the "insistent" totality a thinned version of that totality and put it to use. It must sacrifice the meaning in for the meaning through. The
more universally applicable notion of "Faustian man" is born and the

modern
derstand

world
itself.

has a new
The

series of ideas to help

"somethings" now

it intellectually
can be

to un
to

non-entity

referred

through language: they have been recognized, identified, labeled; and in a discursive?if somewhat diluted?form they can play their part in the march of culture's have attained full "exist institutions. They
ence,"15 in Mr. Vivas' terms, except that, alas, so much of their vital

substance has been lost that culture has only the shadow of their op erative vitality to deal with in its discursive terms. The "existence" ex which becomes the entity is but a parody of their total non-entity which precedes and still underflows istence (or rather "subsistence") what institutional culture must translate them into, if it is to make use of them in its limited way. Still we must return to Marlowe's Faustus its structure and its technical vir itself, to all the interrelations within definition. Art is still tuosity, as their unique vehicle and untranslatable
where between abstraction it was the with Kant, between the percept forces and and the the too with concept, here unrecognizable At them. from operative later moment recognizable new "sub

in culture,

and of Marlowe sistent" forces operating, the Faust of the Faustbook from them enter the and many of the "existent" meanings stemming
work of Goethe Vivas' use of as use signs, and there emerges a new Faust, and, a new unique 15 Mr. with my

of "existence" may

is troublesome cause the for

for me reader some

"existential,"

"existential," my being pre-propositional, that his "existence" has become while tional. istence," Thus my for his metaphysical terms would be terms, the

is really close him because

in conj unction because confusion, to his "subsistence," it is now proposi and "ex and the

"subsistence," "insistence," the aesthetic-thematic, existential,

propositional.

200

After
structure of "insistent"

theNew Criticism
which a later culture, in search of dis

meanings

it can cursive understanding, will prey upon but to which, fortunately, return can when in it efficient moods afford its less always nothing less
authenticity. "insistent" gether, than And and all these "existent," meanings enter of the the work several moments Mann to of Thomas

at a still later moment, with similar results both for art (a new "in sistent" meaning) and for the discursive institutions of culture (a new
"existent" meaning).

Of works
work's

course none of this is to deny the limitations of the critic as he the with his own discursive language. He cannot reproduce
"insistent" meanings since his language we contains only "existent"

ones. But
new and

still his use of signs can crudely

revealing configurations. He?and

point our way

with him?must

toward

the

realize

far from exhaustive his work is with its "existent" formulas. For example, itmust not be thought that the literature of what I have else where called the "tragic vision" can no longer be created "insistentially" to the extent that I have successfully formulated it and laid out its how
categories except in "existent" in the case of the language. uncreative Nothing author could who be searches greater for nonsense, formulas to

substitute
really new

for

the

"insistential"
creation will

obligations
reveal

he

incurs
the

as poet. The
of any

"insistent"

at once

inadequacy

seeming
Mr.

exhaustion
Vivas' own

of possibilities by my
work, for example

"existent"
his recent

framework.
study of Lawrence,

has reflected this theoretical approach. So has my work as I have tried to push beyond the final impasse of The New Apologists by uniting the aesthetic and the existential: in The Tragic Vision, which is controlled
the twin notions by a critical method and in a recent of that on "thematics" transforms Pope16 where, "extremity," into extremity in terms at and thematics a used as category; literary once consistent with

essay

and yet I hope going beyond it, I try to indicate this sense of the relation between poetry and ideology by dis revolutionary in the writer's existential stance something before unperceived covering that is revealed only in the contextual tensions of his work. The most brilliant examples of this approach that I know occur in the writings of among them the first half of a two-part joint ar Sigurd Burckhardt, ticle he shared with Roy Harvey Pearce, "Poetry, and the Language, of Modern Man."17 This Condition is an exciting tour de force that 16 "The Trail China Jar' and the Rude Hand view, V (1961), 176-194.
11 Centennial Review, IV (1960), 1-15.

contextualism

of Chaos," Centennial Re
ways as brilliant, and

In many

201

The Massachusetts

Review

proceeds through analyses of poems on similar subjects by Robert Her and Wallace rick, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Stevens, out of which he he spins it out of the texture spins a history of western sensibility?but of the works, formal their technical devices, their every conceivable element, and yet the formal element never quite formal, because the
form creates vision, creates existential stance.

For Mr. Burckhardt here and elsewhere, each poet becomes creator of his own unique philology in his poem, a philology in which every re flective meaning has substantive cause, in which every phonetic accident
is transformed into substantive causation, for this is an endlessly ideolog

of sound and in which there is no accident. Configurations ical world on create the it of illusion its own, becoming meaning language going a total object itself, having its own world of multiplying relations, To illustrate Burckhardt calls "corporeality." taking on what Mr. an the from A of lines Donne's I choose my own, example briefly, Valediction Forbidding Mourning,
Dull lovers' love, sublunary cannot Whose soul is sense, because things covers "absence" a it doth that remove elemented it. "sense" as concept. is forced We are

admit

Absence, Those with us as a pun root that of

where, upon

the

winking in letter

etymology, as well

a soul of "sense," with taught what "absence" really is: a word with it" and thus the thing that cannot "sense" the thing "that elemented
admit it since "absence" involves?in word and concept, a new in word as

concept?the
incarnation

deprivation,
that characterizes

indeed the elimination

"insistence" and

of "sense." This
opens

is the

approach

is the need to to the study of poetry's role in history. Still remaining simultaneous functions of the in resolve theoretically the miraculously and the through; but their significance has been extended, not sur
rendered. * * *

If these critics find the work to be the creator of an historical vi context is in the work and sion that is otherwise unavailable, whose come New Criticism and its con the there only?thus through having second approach to "new historicism," while often very textualism?the
with on many of the same virtues, is his essay, "The Poet as Fool and Priest,"

ELH, XXIII
Shakespeare.

(1956),

279-298.

And

there are several others as fine, mainly

202

After
close
more

theNew Criticism
finally
awareness

to the first
than the

in practice,
of an

relegates
that has

literature
its locus

to being
elsewhere

no
as

bearer

well. Also related to Existentialism and to Cassirer's broad claims for constitutive symbolism, this approach seems influenced more by Euro is probably Erich pean Stylistics than by New Criticism. Its best model a study of those symbols which constitute reality Auerbach's Mimesis, for various historical moments; but it can find these symbols anywhere, in literature, philosophy, gardens, hair-dos, in a phrase or in a brush is a close analogy in the stroke as well as in an entire work. There plastic arts in the "iconology" of Erwin Panofsky. I find a similar intention in more recent work by Frederick J. Hoff man and Roy Harvey Pearce. Mr. Hoffman has now produced several on in recent literature.18 and selfhood violence, death, startling essays In the best of these there is continually the penetrating discovery of the very pulse of sensibility in the nerves and sinews of the work. Mr. Pearce has sounded theoretical claims and amply exemplified them sev eral times.19 I put Mr. Pearce in a different group from Mr. Burck and their hardt despite their sharing the one article I have mentioned two of one to think the I in it share because claim position, implicit the difference between the two approaches within them demonstrate sees the Mr. Pearce, like Mr. Hoffman, this third direction. While or gets primacy of an inward historical vision that translates itself, into all reflected, into poetry as into other forms of discourse?indeed
forms of cultural expression?neither with of them seems to grant to the

manipulation
cial power, generate denies this

of language within
shared of and only existential after

the peculiarly
the media Indeed tension. Mr.

poetic context
of Mr. the other Pearce remarkable

that spe
arts, expressly demon to

perhaps awarenesses power,

just

Burckhardt's

stration of it:
18 are exciting and the of a book on portions are "The Moment Victim: Some subj ect of Violence: soon to be

These

the

the most sailant

Ernst

J?nger

completed. and

Among the Lit

erary Problem of Fact," Essays in Criticism, X

Definitions

(1960),

405-421;
Violence,"

"The As
Centennial

of Modern

Review, V (1961), 59-75. (1961), 19

See especially "Poetry, Burckhardt,

223-238;
the second

"The
half and of

Self in Time,"
the article he

Chicago Review,
co-authored of Modern with Man,"

XV
Mr. Cen

Language,

the Condition

tennial Review, IV (1960), 15-31; and "Historicism Once More," Kenyon Review, XX (1958), 554-591. I should suppose this approach is carried out in his ambitious study, The Continuity of American Poetry (Princeton, 1961),
which appeared during the writing of this essay.

203

The Massachusetts
Note well that I avoid it seems of what therefore to me

Review
for use are

use of language"; the phrase deliberately "poetic are a of concentrated poems special, simply examples some modern scholars utterances" and call "non-casual linguistic that still quite within the purview of language as we use it day-to-day.20

If we
autonomous,

ask again, this time of Mr.

untranslatable context,

Pearce, where
he must give

he finds the unique,

us essentially the an

that Auerbach in a description of the cultural gave inMimesis matrix of an historical moment that, strikingly, sounds almost exactly like a description by Cleanth Brooks of the closed context of a poem :
When of a that epochs realize people . . . when, pattern concept of of historical dynamics, of their of constant inner individual is reflected that of and societies are not words, to be judged come to in terms develop a

swer

in other the

sense and

unity character the

epochs, in each

mobility; so that of

incomparability come when they

conviction forms

general not be events of one

the meaning and cognition in the

each epoch its manifestations; cannot of events the material strata and

phenomena to the vital appreciate as a whole whose appears

they of historical

that

when, accept finally, they be grasped in abstract and to understand it must needed in major political in the depths culture, that there it is only because in and inner what, forces, by and

sought exclusively but also in art, economy, and its men the workaday world is unique, what and a more those the forces

upper material

of society intellectual

and women, is animated

can grasp what a more concrete both is to be expected that

insights

in consequence, that, as animated by inner Here cultural is an admirable

present and

then it valid: is universally sense, profound to the present and also be transferred will and unique, too will be seen as incomparable . . .21 state of in a constant development but expressive not one context that, in for the all dy its

and can

organicism,

statement, exciting a find uniquely as he

namic
us

linguistic

interrelations
statement

of the literary work. Mr.

relates his notion

Panofsky
of

gives

a more

transparent

"iconology"

to the symbolism of Cassirer

In thus

:
stories all we itself and and these deal allegories elements with as man as what of

ifestations Ernst

of pure forms, motifs, images, conceiving we of underlying interpret principles, ... values has called Cassirer "symbolical" symptom of something and we else which interpret evidence "symbolical" and the expresses

the work

art as a of other tures and 20

in a countless

symptoms, as more particularized of these interpretation Language,

of

its compositional this "something values (which of Modern

iconographical else." The discovery are often to unknown Man," Centennial

variety fea

Review, IV (1960), 15 n. 21 trans. Willard Mimesis,

debted to my student, Mr. Keith

"Poetry,

Condition

Trask
Kessel,

(New York,
for making

1957),
me aware

391.
of

I am
this

in

passage.

204

After
the artist himself to intended to

theNew Criticism
emphatically of what we differ may from call what he "iconology" consciously as opposed

even and may is the object express)

"iconography."22

The word "symptom" here is thoroughly the symptomatic of where context is. And we must worry, despite any sophisticated disclaimers, about how "new" this sort of historicism finally can be. can be a great difference There from history to between moving literature and moving from literature to history, between finding the locus of the inviolable context out of which the critic must operate in the cultural complex and finding it in the language complex of the the In work. each first of of these, one may come to the work literary with too good an idea of what he is looking for, of what forces it must reflect or?to be theoretically candid?what forces it must "imitate"; thus there must be an inhibiting of the empirical act that can allow literature to do its own work. But in the latter, the critic can learn from the work what it was in the culture that he as historian should have been looking for, even if without the work's illuminations he could not have seen it. Still I would hope that, in actually working with literature, this difference between the two approaches to this third direction prove
not the to two be so essential, in or at their least so apparent. dedication For to it seems poetry's to me role that in an approaches, to be?can differences common

existential
turns What out

anthropology?which
be made must into remain

is what
strong between

their "new
allies. these two

historicism"
are

really
very

groups

likely shaped by what have New Criticism, toward its the poetic context. Indeed, tions I have dealt with in

been their differences in attitude toward the view of the nature of poetic discourse and of while I have categorized the several direc this essay as they reflected one or another of the extra-literary influences that have become increasingly influential the latter years of the reign of the New Criticism, still I would during
that it is their attitude toward the poem as an autonomous, if

maintain

context, that orients the final direction ultimately self-justified, and the final value for current literary theory of these various claims. This ismy way of proposing, with perhaps too much self-interest but I think as much candor, that despite the present abandonment of the New the most promising critical avenues are Criticism, probably those pur sued in full and sympathetic awareness of those already explored and even exhausted by this lately departed, if not universally lamented,
movement.

never

22 Meaning

in the Visual Arts (New York, 1955), 31.

205