Delving Deep into the Anglo-American Frontier

It is sometimes known as the science of literature for it looks at the technical aspects of the vocabulary
that is used in the selection (the sound, imagery, narrative structure, point of view, and others).
Old English poetry is usually written with a line of four stressed syllables and no fixed number of
unstressed syllable.

William Shakespeare
New Criticism emphasizes explication, or "close reading," of "the work itself." It rejects old historicism's
attention to biographical and sociological matters. Instead, the objective determination as to "how a piece
works" can be found through close focus and analysis, rather than through extraneous and erudite special
knowledge
Meaning exists on the page.
Meanwhile, the rise of science and industry, as well as changes in ways of thinking and feeling, wrought
many modifications in people’s lives. All these factors in the development of the United States molded the
literature of the country.

Anglo-Saxon Literature
Beowulf is the oldest surviving Germanic epic and the longest Old English poem

Delving Deep into the Anglo-American Frontier

After a successful rebellion against the motherland, America became the United States, a nation. By the
end of the 19th century this nation extended southward to the Gulf of Mexico, northward to the 49th
parallel, and westward to the Pacific.

William Shakespeare
New Criticism is a post-World War I school of Anglo-American literary critical theory that insisted on the
intrinsic value of a work of art and focused attention on the individual work alone as an independent unit
of meaning.
By the end of the 19th century, too, it had taken its place among the powers of the world—its fortunes so
interrelated with those of other nations that inevitably it became involved in two world wars and, following
these conflicts, with the problems of Europe and East Asia.
Old English poetry has survived almost entirely in four manuscripts: the Exeter Book, the Junius
Manuscript, the Vercelli Book, and the Beowulf manuscript.
The primary technique employed in the New Critical approach is close analytic reading of the text
Anglo is a prefix indicating a relation to the Angles, England, the English people, or the English language,
such as in the term Anglo-Saxon language

Edgar Allan Poe

Old English prose works include legal writings, medical tracts, religious texts, and translations from Latin
and other languages.
Other great works of Old English poetry include The Wanderer, The Seafarer, The Battle of Maldon, and
The Dream of the Rood.
American Literature
Two known poets from this period are Caedmon, considered the first Old English Christian poet, and
Cynewulf.
To do New Critical reading, ask yourself, "How does this piece work?" Look for complexities in the text:
paradoxes, ironies, ambiguities. Find a unifying idea or theme which resolves these tensions.
American literature, the body of written works produced in the English language in the United States.
New Criticism, incorporating Formalism, examines the relationships between a text's ideas and its form,
between what a text says and the way it says it. New Critics may find tension, irony, or paradox in this
relation, but they usually resolve it into unity and coherence of meaning.
"Beowulf" started through the oral tradition, the transmission of a tale from one person to another through
storytelling.
It is also quite common for these poems to end unrhymed.
NEW CRITICISM
It is broken by a caesura (a break in the flow of sound) and is arranged in independent patterns.
New Critics insist that the meaning of a text is intrinsic and should not be confused with the author's
intentions nor the work's affective dimension.
For almost a century and a half, America was merely a group of colonies scattered along the eastern
seaboard of the North American continent—colonies from which a few hardy souls tentatively ventured
westward.
Old English literature, also called Anglo-Saxon literature, is literature written in Old English c. 650–c.
1100.
"Beowulf" is a Germanic epic that details the adventures of its lead character (Beowulf as the "chief" of his
kingdom) as he fearlessly kills a monster that was terrorizing his kingdom.
Old Christian poetry is simplistic, for it is marked by innocent Christian belief