Anglo-American New Criticism

I.

Major Concepts:
1. Practical criticism: Practical criticism focuses upon the text and
the text alone. It was an ideal program for teasing out all the
opposites that were reconciled and transcended in poetry, often
through the use of irony. Practical criticism became a major
instrument in spreading the idea that the best poems created a
vulnerable harmony a precarious coherence out of conflicting
perspectives and emotions.
2. Organic Unity: It is a term that the New Critics borrowed from the
writings of S. T. Coleridge. It means that all parts of a poem are
interrelated and interconnected, with each part reflecting and
helping to support the poems central idea. It creates a sense of
harmonization and results in the poems oneness.
3. Intentional fallacy: intentional fallacy is to confuse what the
author intended in the writing of a poem (or other work of
literature) with what is actually there on the page. While the
intentional fallacy has to do with the author.
4. Affective fallacy: the affective fallacy has to do with the reader.
It is to confuse the readers emotional response to the poem with
what the poem really tells them. The way the poem affects them
blinds them to its reality.
5. Close reading: Close reading is to focus on the text with the
authors intentions and the readers response removed from the
scene. Through close reading, the study of literature restricted
itself to analysing the techniques and strategies that poems used
to deliver their paradoxical effects: the system of checks and
balances that creates the diversity in unity that we experience.
6. The Heresy of Paraphrase: it is the habit that we all have of
summarizing a poem and other works of literature in one or two
phrases. For the New Critics, paraphrasing is a deadly sin against
the poem and against our own experience of the poem. Turning a

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poem into a thematic statement was for them the heresy of

paraphrase.
7. Paradox vs. Ambiguity: Paradox refers to the parts of the text
which appear to conflict with one another. Ambiguity refers to the
gaps of meaning that appear in a text; these gaps can generally be
resolved through a close reading of the text.

II.

The Main Figures of New Criticism

T. S. Eliot:

Eliot, along with I. A. Richards, helped lay the foundations of New Criticism.
The New Critics borrow from Eliot various ideas. First, criticism must be
directed to the poem, not the poet. Second, the reader of poetry must be
instructed in literary techniques and established poetic traditions. Third, the
only way of expressing emotion through art is by finding an objective
correlative: a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events, or reactions that
can effectively awaken in the reader the emotional response the author
indirectly or impersonally desires.

I. A. Richards:
I. A. Richards is a psychologist and literary critic. New Criticism borrows
from him the term of practical criticism. Richards identified the difficulties
that poetry presents to its readers: matters of interpretation, poetic
techniques, and specific meanings. He devised an intricate system for
arriving at a poems meaning, including a minute scrutiny of the text.

III.

The Basic Principles of the New Criticism

It is yet too early to make any definitive evaluation of their work and
contribution. Therefore, it would be more fruitful to consider their basic tenets,
tenets to which they all subscribe despite their individual differences. These
basic tenets of the New Criticism may be summarized as follows:
(a) The New Critics develop their objective theory of art. To the New Critics, a
poem, or a work of art, is the thing in itself. The critic must concentrate
on the text and illuminate it. The function of the critic is to analyse,
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interpret and evaluate a work of art. A poem is distinct from the poet and
his social milieu; it is a definite entity in itself and must be studied as
such. The critic must devote himself to close reading of the text.
(b)Moral and religious considerations, social, political and environmental
conditions, the details of the poet's biography, are irrelevant and are
obstacles in the way of a real understanding of a, work of literature. The
literary critic must rid himself of all such extrinsic bias and prejudices. He
must approach the work with an open mind, ready to study it, "as is in
itself."
(c) The critic must not allow himself to be hampered and prejudiced by any
literary theory.
(d)A poem has both form and content and both should be closely studied
and analysed before a true understanding of its meaning becomes
possible.
(e) Words, images, rhythm, metre, etc., constitute the form of poetry and are
to be closely studied. A poem is an organic whole and these different
parts are inter-connected and these inter-connections, the reaction of one
upon the other, and upon the total meaning, is to be closely followed and
examined.
(f) The study of words, their arrangement, the way in which they act and
react on each other is all-important. Words, besides their literal
significance, also have emotional, associative, and symbolic significance,
and only close application and analysis can bring out their total meaning.
(g)Poetry is communication and language is the means of communication,
so the New Critics seek to understand the full meaning of a poem
through a study of poetic language.
(h)The New Critics are opposed both to the historical and comparative
methods of criticism. Historical considerations are extraneous to the work
of literature, and comparison of works of art is to be resorted to with
great caution and in rare instances alone for the intent and aim of writers
differ, and so their method, their techniques, their forms, are bound to be
different.
(i) They are

also

anti-impressionistic.

Instead

of

giving

merely

his

impression, which are bound to be vague and subjective, the critic must
make a close, objective and precise study of the poem concerned.

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Reader Response Theory

I.

Major Concepts:
1. Phenomenology:
underlying

nature

phenomena.

Phenomenology
both

of

claims

human

to

show

consciousness

us
and

the
of

This approach does not encourage a purely

subjective concern for the critics mental structure. It is a type of

criticism which tries to enter into the world of a writers works and
to arrive at an understanding of the underlying nature or essence
of the writings as they appear to the critics consciousness. It is a
modern philosophical tendency that emphasizes the perceiver.
2. Horizon of Expectations: Hans Robert Jauss uses the term
horizon of expectations to describe the criteria readers use to
judge literary texts in any given period. These criteria will help the
reader decide how to judge a poem as, for example, an epic or a
tragedy or a pastoral; it will also, in a more general way, cover
what is to be regarded as poetic or literary as opposed to unpoetic
or non-literary uses of languages. Ordinary writing and reading will
work within such a horizon. The original horizon of expectations
only tells us how the work was valued and interpreted when it
appeared, but does not establish its meaning finally.
3. The Virtual reader: the reader to whom the author believes he
or she is writing.
4. The implied reader: the implied reader is the reader whom the
text creates for itself and amounts to a network of responseinviting structures which predispose us to read in certain ways.
5. Interpretive communities:
interpretive community is a
concept, articulated by Fish, that readers within an "interpretive
community" share reading strategies, values and interpretive
assumptions.

The

strategies

of

particular

interpretative

community determine the entire process of reading the

stylistic facts of the texts and the experience of reading them.
6. Transactional Experience: The text acts as a stimulus for
eliciting various past experiences, thoughts, and ideas from the

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reader, those found in both our everyday existence and in past

II.

reading experiences.

The Main Figures of Reader Response Criticism

Louise Michelle Rosenblatt:

Louise Michelle Rosenblatt is an American literary critic. In her Literature as

Exploration, she asserts that both the reader and the text must work
together to produce meaning. According to her, the reader and text
participate in a transactional experience through which the text shapes the
readers experiences by functioning as a blueprint, selecting, limiting, and
ordering those ideas that best conform to the text. A poem is created
each time a reader transacts with a text. Moreover, Rosenblatt
distinguishes two ways of reading: efferent and aesthetic. Efferent
reading is a reading for information. Aesthetic reading is a process
of experiencing the text.

Gerard Prince:
Gerard Prince developed a specific kind of structuralism known as
narratology. Narratology is the process of analysing a story using all
the elements involved in its telling. According to Prince, critics focus
on the narrator and not the narratee to whom the narrator is
speaking. Prince believes that by analysing the various signs in the
text, it is possible to identify the narratee and to classify stories
based on the different kinds of narratees created by the text
themselves. The narratee may include three types of readers: the
real, the virtual, and the ideal.

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 Hans Robert Jauss:

Hans Robert Jauss is a German literary critic. He emphasises that a texts

social history must be considered in interpreting the text. He declares that a
critic must examine how any given text was accepted or received by its
contemporary readers. Using the term horizons of expectation, Jauss
points out that the evaluations and interpretations of a given text changes
from one historical period to another. Jauss argues that the overall value
and meaning of any text can never become fixed or universal.

Wolfgang Iser:
Wolfgang Iser is a German literary scholar whose reader response theory
began to evolve in 1967. He is considered to be the founder of the
Constance School of reception aesthetics. Iser believes that any object can
achieve meaning only when an active consciousness perceives it. He
declares that the critics job is not to dissect or explain the text but to
examine and explain the texts effect on the reader. Iser differentiates two
kinds of readers: the implied reader and the actual reader. He disavows the
New Critical belief in the oneness of the texts meaning. According to Iser,
each reader makes concrete the text by making sense of it, filling in the
gaps, and continually adopting new horizons of expectation. Thus the
reader, for him, becomes a co-author of the text.

Norman Holland:

Louise Michelle Rosenblatt is an American literary critic. In her Literature as

Exploration, she asserts that both the reader and the text must work
together to produce meaning. According to her, the reader and text
participate in a transactional experience through which the text shapes the
readers experiences by functioning as a blueprint, selecting, limiting, and
ordering those ideas that best conform to the text. A poem is created
each time a reader transacts with a text. Moreover, Rosenblatt
distinguishes two ways of reading: efferent and aesthetic. Efferent
reading is a reading for information. Aesthetic reading is a process
of experiencing the text.

III.

The Basic Tenets of Reader-oriented Theories

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In the 1930s, students and authors became disenchanted with the supposition
that the reader was not important in evaluating a piece of literature. In 1938,
Louise Rosenblatt thought that criticism should involve a personal sense of
literature; a spontaneous and honest reaction. Reader-oriented theories
focuses on how and why a reader responds to a specific text in a specific
manner. Reader-oriented theories embraces the idea that one text can mean
something vastly different to each reader.
(a) Reader-oriented theory allows for inferences and insights by the reader.
These basic tenets of reader-oriented theory may be summarized as
follows:
(b)Reader-oriented theory accepts that a readers background knowledge
and experiences impact his/her interpretation of a text.
(c) Reader-oriented theory encourages the reader to explore his/her
emotional response to a literary work.
(d)Reader-oriented theory also expects readers to work as a community to
share ideas and seek common ground (Lynn 69).
(e) A reader should not passively accept a text, but should actively make
meaning of the work.
(f) No work of literature ever comes alive until it is read and contemplated
by the reader. The reader completes the work.
(g)The reader builds a connection with the text by reflecting on his/her
mental perceptions based upon the text.
(h)The reader seeks common ground with other readers while learning from
each persons unique response to the literature.
(i) Any literary work cannot be enjoyed unless a reader becomes actively
involved in the words woven together.
(j) Instead of a literary work standing alone, a literary work is coordinately
as important as the reader.
(k) The literary work depends upon the reader to assimilate and actualize
the text.
(l) The literary work serves as a vehicle with a built-in GPS, while the reader
drives the work to the final destination. Both work in concert to arrive at
an understanding.
(m)
Reader-Response Theory allows for a reader to respond differently
to a text each and every time he/she reads the text.
(n)As personal experiences and exposures to literature grow, a persons
response to a text changes.

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(o) Readers focus on the aesthetic the emotional response rather than the
efferent the informational component of reading.
(p)Aesthetic reading also calls for empathy the reader puts himself/herself
in the place of characters to determine if the way a character reacts is
realistic or morally similar to the readers response

Psychoanalytic Theory
I.

Major Concepts:
1. The Conscious: the rational and the reasoning part of the mind
that perceives and records external reality.
2. The Unconscious: the storehouse of disguised truths and hidden
desires that want to be revealed in and through the conscious. It is
the irrational part of the mind that receives and stores our hidden
desires, ambitions, fears, passions, and irrational thoughts. It
governs a large part of our actions.
3. Parapraxes (Freudian Slips): mistakes of speech or actions
which reveals our true intentions, hidden desires, and the disguised
truths through incautious actions, such as accidental slips of the
tongue, failures of memory, the misplacing of objects, or the
misreading of texts. Our unconscious wishes and intentions comes
out through our dreams, art, literature, and play.
4. The Pleasure Principle: it desires only

pleasures

and

immediate satisfaction of instinctual drives. It ignores moral and

sexual boundaries established by society.
5. Reality Principle: It recognizes the need for societal standards
and regulations on pleasure. It enables us to understand that
our pleasure cannot all be fulfilled the way we want them.

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Therefore, it inspires us to seek other routes of attaining

pleasure.
6. The ID:

It

is

the

irrational,

instinctual,

unknown,

and

unconscious part of the psyche. This is an area of instincts,

dreams, desires and all that does not come to the fore in our
consciousness.
7. The ego: It is the rational, logical waking part of the mind,
although much of its activities remain in the unconscious. It is
the conscious mind, which we work with, use and most aware
of. It mediates between Id and Superego.
8. The superego: It acts as an internal censor causing us to make
moral judgments in light of social pressures. It is what can be
called our conscience. It is drawn from social settings and
cultural codes. It does influence the way the conscious works.
Hence, it operates in harmony with the reality principle.
9. The collective unconscious: It houses the cumulative
knowledge, experiences, and images of the entire human
race.
10.
The Imaginary Order: It is in the part of the psyche
that contains our wishes, our fantasies, and our images. In
this phase of our psyche development, we are joyfully united
as one with our mother, receiving our food, our care, and all
our comfort from her. In this preverbal state, we rely on
images as a means of perceiving and interpreting the world.
Our image of ourselves is always in flux. We are not able to
differentiate where one image stops and another begins.
11.
Archetypes: patterns or images of repeated human
experiences (such as birth, death, rebirth, the four seasons,
and motherhood) that expresses themselves in our stories,

II.

dreams, religions, and fantasies.

The Main Figures of Psychoanalysis

Sigmund Freud:

Sigmund Freud is known as the founder of psychology which is the study of

human behaviour. In his famous work The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud
argues that humans have a sub-consciousness that controls our desires.
Our sub-conscious is divided into the Id or uncontrolled desires, the Ego
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the realistic desires or the part of our personality we share with the world,
and the Super Ego or our critical and moralistic selves. Freudian
criticism views art as the imagined fulfillment of wishes that reality
denies. According to Freud, artists sublimate their desires and
translate their imagined wishes into art. We, as an audience, respond
to the sublimated wishes that we share with the artist. Working from
this view, an artists biography becomes a useful tool in interpreting
his or her work. Freudian criticism is also used as a term to
describe the analysis of Freudian images within a work of art.

Carl Jung:

Carl Jung is among the co-founders of the psychoanalytic movement and

the founder of analytical psychology, Jung focuses on understanding the
psyche through exploring the worlds of dreams, art, mythology, religion and
philosophy. He is most familiar to the general public for the concept of
archetype, which he has advanced as instrumental in analysing personality,
hence the personality types he analyzes. In The Archetypes and the
Collective Unconscious he defines the archetype as an element of the
archaic common substratum of the mind, or collective unconscious mind,
specifically the universal psychic dispositions that form the substrate from
which the basic themes of human life emerge. His archetype theory has
inspired both Northrop Fryes archetypal criticism in The Anatomy of
Criticism (1957).

Jacques Lacan:
Jacques Lacan believes that the unconscious greatly affects our conscious
behavior. His criticism is based on the view that the unconscious, and
our perception of ourselves, is shaped in the symbolic order of
language rather than in the imaginary order of pre-linguistic
thought. Lacan is famous in literary circles for his influential reading
of Edgar Allan Poes The Purloined Letter.

III.

The Basic Tenets of Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis can be considered from the perspectives of Sigmund

Freud, Jacques Lacan and Carl Gustav Jung. The centrality of psychological
criticism is to define literature as an expression of the authors psyche
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pivoted on his or her unconscious being which requires an interpretation

like a dream. Psychological criticism deals with a work of literature
primarily as an expression, in fictional form, of the personality, state of
mind, feelings, and desires of its author. The assumption of psychoanalytic
critics is that a work of literature is correlated with its author's mental
traits. In psychoanalytic criticism, reference to the author's personality is
used to explain and interpret a literary work. Also, reference to literary
works is made in order to establish, biographically, the personality of the
author. The mode of reading a literary work itself is a way of experiencing
the distinctive subjectivity or consciousness of its author. This theory
requires that we investigate the psychology of a character or an author to
figure out the meaning of a text. The leading tradition in psychological
criticism is that of Freud. According to its followers, the meaning of a work
of literature depends on the psyche and even on the neuroses of the
author. Thus, a literary work is valued based on the authors unconscious.

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