New criticism

1. “ Ne w Criti c is m “ by : a ulia – dewa – ardo

2. New Criticism era ( 1940 – 1960) It appeared as a reaction toward Biographical and Traditional Historical criticism, which was focused on extra-text materials, such as the biography of the author.

3. We discuss new criticism into 2 ways

4. How new criticism see a text:

5. Intentional fallacy,  term used in 20th-century literary criticism to describe the problem inherent in trying to judge a work of art by assuming the intent or purpose of the artist who created it. Affective fallacy,   according to the followers of New Criticism, the misconception that arises from judging a poem by the emotional effect that it produces in the reader. The concept of affective fallacy is a direct attack on impressionistic criticism, which argues that the reader’s response to a poem is the ultimate indication of its value.

6. ” 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

7. 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

8. Ambiguity It occurs when a word, image, or event generates two or more different meaning. # e.g. : " Thanks for dinner. I’ve never seen potatoes cooked like that before." (Jonah Baldwin in the film  Sleepless in Seattle , 1993)

9. Paradox It typically arise from false assumptions, which then lead to inconsistencies between observed and expected behavior.  # e.g. : "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 )

10. 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. # e.g. : 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 devorcees were included, except those who had showed signs of penitence by being remarried to very wealthy ( Edirth Wharton’s House of Mirth (1950)

11. Tension a state of mental or emotional strain or suspense or when there is suspense in the story

12. How can New Criticism help us understand the text ?

13. 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

14. How do we discover or unlock that meaning ?

15. By following a 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 ?

16. The importance of metaphor in a lit. 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

17. Those are called Formal Elements of a text Image, symbols, metaphors, rhyme, meter, point of view, setting, characterization and plot

18. For of Clifton’s poem illustrates, New Criticism asked us to look closely at the formal elements of the text to help us discover the poem’s theme and to explain the ways in which those formal elements establish it. New Critics believed they allowed the literary work itself to provide the context within which we interpret and evaluate it.

19. Other meanings of the word found in Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary include “crude” or “vulgar,” “a quarrelsome woman,” and “a threatening beggar.” Although most words can be found to have more than one dictionary definition, a word’s ambiguity is determined not by the dictionary but by the context of the poem as a whole, in terms of which alone the word’s meaning or meanings must be judged.

20. THE SUMMARY

21. Sometimes New Critics did believe that the text warranted a discussion of its psychological, sociological, or philosophical elements because those elements were obviously integral to the work’s characterization or plot.

22. N ew Critics also called their approach objective criticism because their focus on each text’s own formal element ensured, they claimed, that each text —each object being interpreted —would itself dictate how it would be interpreted.

23. T H ANK Y O U Source : Lois Tyson- Critical Theory Today ( text book) http://grammar.about.com/od/pq/g/paradoxterm.htm http://www.britannica.com/search?query=paradox http://web.calstatela.edu/faculty/jgarret/441/handout-newcriticism.pdf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hketJPkhbDI