NEW

CRITICISM
AND
FORMALISM
 1 HISTORICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL

CONTENTS 2 MORAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL

HISTORICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL
NEW CRITICISM/FORMALISM

• Prior to the 1920s, literary criticism took a largely historical slant. To understand a text, critics often
looked to its historical background and the history of the language used in the text.
• But in 1929, a literary critic at Cambridge by the name of Ivor Armstrong Richards published Practical
Criticism. His book reported on an experiment that involved people reading and responding to poems
without knowing who the authors were. Richards was interested in why people responded to these
poems the way they did.
• In 1939, Richards began teaching at Harvard and influenced a new American literary theory. Two years
later, John Crowe Ransom, an English professor at Kenyon College, published New Criticism. The new
book's title was applied to this young method of examining texts. New Criticism went on to become a
popular method of literary analysis throughout the middle of the 20th century.
HISTORICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL

NEW CRITICISM/FORMALISM

• First introduced in the early 20th Century in America by John Crowe Ransom
• New criticism was created out of the formalist movement
• The movement derived its name from John Crowe Ransom’s 1941 book The New Criticism. 
• It was developed as a response to older schools of criticism that examined things like history, language,
culture and the author's life to glean meaning from literary works.
• American critics (such as John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren, and Cleanth Brooks) adapted
formalism and termed their adaptation “New Criticism.”
HISTORICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL

Ivor Armstrong Richards

(known as I.A Richards)

• Born february 26, 1893 -- died September 7, 1979

• A poet, dramatist, philosopher,
• He was pioneer in the domain of New Criticism and
called him the “Father of New Criticism”
HISTORICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL

John Crowe Ransom

• Born April 30, 1888 -- died July 3, 1974

• An American Poet
• An English Professor at Kenyon College
• He is considered to be a founder of the New
Criticism school of Literary Criticism
 A picture of John Crowe
Ransom’s book, The New
Criticism
SCHOLARS INVOLVED IN NEW CRITICISM
• Thomas Stearns Eliot also known as T. S. Eliot - Poet who made significant contributions to the
field of literary criticism through his works by giving a cue to new critics

• Allen Tate- The subject of Tate's own interpretive essay "Narcissus as Narcissus" (1938), itself is
a model of the New Criticism.

• Cleanth Brooks- A central figure of New Criticism that advocates close reading because, as he
states in The Well Wrought Urn, "by making the closest examination of what the poem says as a
poem" (Leitch 2001), a critic can effectively interpret the text

• William Empson- impacted new criticism through his work Seven Types of Ambiguity
 MORAL AND
PHILOSOPHICAL
BACKGROUND
PHILOSOPHICAL BACKGROUND

•The primary technique employed in the New Critical approach is close analytic reading of the text, a

technique as old as Aristotle’s Poetics.

•The New Critics, however, introduced refinements into the method. Early seminal works in the tradition

were those of the English critics I.A. Richards (Practical Criticism, 1929) and William Empson (Seven

Types of Ambiguity, 1930). English poet T.S. Eliot also made contributions, with his critical essays

“Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1917) and “Hamlet and His Problems” (1919).

•New Criticism was eclipsed as the dominant mode of Anglo-American literary criticism by the 1970s.
? ? What is New
?

Criticism?
NEW CRITICISM

• New Criticism talked about the closed-reading approach

• Tended to consider texts as autonomous and “closed,” meaning that everything that is needed to

understand from the work is present within it.

• New critics did not completely discount the relevance of the author, background, or possible sources of

the work.
Concepts of New Criticism

• INTENTIONAL FALLACY

The mistake of attempting to understand the author's intentions when interpreting a literary work.

• AFFECTIVE FALLACY

Refers to the supposed error of judging or evaluating a text on the basis of its emotional effects on a

reader.
?
What is
? Formalism?
?
FORMALISM

• Formalism is a branch of literary theory and criticism which deals with the structures of text.

• It means that external agents outside of the text are not taken into consideration. All the things about

culture, politics, and the author’s intent or societal influences are excluded from formalism.

• The focus in formalism is only on the text and the contents within the text such as grammar,

syntax, signs, literary tropes, etc.

• Formalism also brings attention to structural tendencies within a text or across texts such as genre

and categories.
FORMALISM

• Formalism is based on an analysis of a text rather than a discussion on issues more distant to the

text.

• Formalism also argued that a text is an autonomous entity liberated from the intention of the author.

• A text according to Formalism is a thing on its own without the need of external agents. As the name

suggests, Formalism is a scientific, technical mode of understanding texts which expects a greater

degree of mental intelligence instead of emotional intelligence from the readers.

TO SUM UP

New Criticism was founded by John Crowe Ransom

The “Father of New Criticism” is Ivor Armstrong Richard

New Criticism is looking at the close reading while Formalism is looking at the form of the text.

Both disregard the text from the biography of the author and its social context.
Let's have a
quiz!
QUESTIONS:
1. Who is the Father of New Criticism?
2. Who is the founder of New Criticism?
3. New criticism was created out of?
4. What year “The New Criticism” was published?
5. Who is the poet who made significant contributions to the
field of literary criticism?
QUESTIONS:
6. It is a branch of literary theory and criticism which deals
with the structures of text
7. It refers to the supposed error of judging.
8. It talks about the closed-reading approach
9-10. Based on your understanding what is New Criticism
and Formalism?
 GROUP MEMBERS
ARANETA, SHAIRYL
ALARCIO, KRISTYNNE
ALIDO, REAH MAE
BACQUIAL, SALVIE JOYCE
BALIGNOT, PRINCESS DOROTHY
Thank
You!!
REFERENCES:

Russian Formalism and New Criticism - Writing Commons. (2021). Retrieved 5 September 2021, from
https://writingcommons.org/section/research/research-methods/textual-methods/literary-criticism/russian-
formalism-and-new-criticism/

(2021). Retrieved 5 September 2021, from https://study.com/academy/lesson/new-criticism-in-literature-

definition-examples-quiz.html

New Criticism By Allison Barfield Lindsey Gaston Michael. (2021). Retrieved 5 September 2021, from
https://slidetodoc.com/new-criticism-by-allison-barfield-lindsey-gaston-michael/

New Criticism | Introduction to Literature. (2021). Retrieved 6 September 2021, from

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/introliterature/chapter/new-criticism-suggested-replacement/