NEW CRITICISM

What is New Criticism

▪ New Criticism is a very different literary theory.
▪ First introduced in the early 20th Century in
America by John Crowe Ransom,
New Criticism was created out of the formalist
movement.
▪ It focuses on the importance of close reading
a piece of literature, mainly, poetry
to understand how it functions as a “self-
contained” object.
▪ It was created to show an alternative form of
literary analysis, with most
generally focusing on the history of the author,
the relation of the words used to
foreign on ancient languages, as well as
comparative sources, ignoring the
aesthetics of the work altogether.
 We discuss New criticism into 2 ways

NEW
CRITICISM

As a literary As a way of
theory reading a text
 How New criticism see a text ?

Complete work of art

Its example to validate our

Text
interpretation

Source to analyze and get

meaning
 “ Close reading ”
• The only way we can know if a given
author’s intention or a given reader’s
interpretation which actually represent
the true meaning is by carefully
Examine
• For NC, the complexity of a text is created
by the multiple and often conflicting
meaning in it.
These meaning are a product primarily of
four kinds of linguistic devices :
- paradox -ambiguity - irony- tension
 Ambiguity
• It occurs when a word, image, or event
generates two or more different meaning.
Example:
"Thanks for dinner. I’ve never seen
potatoes cooked like that before."
(Jonah Baldwin in the film Sleepless in
Seattle, 1993)
 Paradox
• It typically arise from false assumptions,
which then lead to inconsistencies
between observed and expected
behavior.
Example:
"Someday you will be old enough
to start reading fairy tales again."
(C.S. Lewis to his godchild, Lucy Barfield, to
whom he dedicated The Lion, the Witch
and the Wardrobe)
 Irony
• a figure of speech in which words are used in
such a way that their intended meaning is
different from the actual meaning of the words.
Example :
Once in the winter the rector would come to
dine , and her husband would beg her to go
over the list and see that no divorcees were
included, except those who had showed signs
of penitence by being remarried to very
wealthy ( Edirth Wharton’s House of Mirth
(1950)
 Tension
• a state of mental or emotional strain or
suspense or when there is suspense in the
story
How can New Criticism help us understand the text?

• New Criticism is a powerful tool for those

of us that have problems understanding a
work of literature.
• NC formulated a method of reading, a
simple formula that will help us unlock the
meaning of a text
How do we discover or unlock that meaning?
By following these (simple formula)
• Who is speaking in the text ?
( not the author, not the poet, whoever/whatever
created the text but it is created by the text itself.)
• Who is being spoken to? or
• Who is the addressee? or
• Who is the implied reader of the text?
• Where is the setting ? When it is ?
• What is the central metaphors of the text ?
The importance of metaphor in a Literary text
• New Critics pointed out is that a text is not
only about what is seems to be talking
about, it is always something else.
There is always something other than the
literal meaning of the text.
• Metaphors is what makes lit. language
different from the ordinary language
 That would be all
Thank You!