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Dr. Richard Clarke LITS2306 Notes 12A
ANGLO-AMERICAN NEW CRITICISM
So-called objective criti cs are, according to Abrams, ones who focus on the form or structure of the
literary work itself to the exclusion of all other considerations such as the world which it refl ects (the
mimetic approach), the author who wrote it (the expressive approach), or the im pact which it has on the
reader and vice versa (the pragmatic approach). In other words, it matters less what a work represents
or is about, what its author meant, or what it does, good or bad, to the reader, or what a reader does to a
text. What matters more is understanding the literary work per se, the textual object itself or, to be
precise, how it is put together or structured, its form. The objectiv e approach is an essentially empirical
undertaking that is supposed to permit an objective or neutral apprehension of the text ‘as in itself it
really is,’ something that the emphases of the other approaches do not allow. Another related term for
this appr oach i s formalism.
The New Critics were an ‘objective’ school of li terary critics who flouri shed in the South of the
USA at universities li ke Vanderbilt during their heyday of the 1940s. An off-spring of the M odernists (and
of Eliot’s insistence in particular that we should train our attention upon the poem rather than the poet),
their influence in turn (especi ally of such concepts of theirs as the ‘intenti onal fallacy’) upon subsequent
generations is incalculable ev en here in the Caribbean where for decades after their v iews were critical
orthodoxy. Advocating what some termed an intrinsic rather than extrinsic approach to criti cism, they
were primarily interested in the study of lyric poetry (i.e. poetr y normally v iewed as written to express the
point of view and subjective state of mind of the poet). However, contrary to the Rom antics, they
advised that t he cri tic sho uld focus not on t he poet, the rea der, or on what the po em rep resents ( these
would all be extrinsic to or a distraction from the poem itself), but on the poem (to do so would constitute
an intrinsic approach to criti cism). Sometimes, the New Critics are accused (for example, by critics of
theirs such as Alfred Kazin) of ‘f etishising form,’ that is, placing it on a pedestal and worshiping it to the
exclusion of all else.
W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley
The “Intentional Fallacy” (1946) and the “Affective Fall acy” (1949)
Wim satt and Beardsley took it upon themselv es to ‘legislate’ for the benefit of subsequent generations
two of the most important critical heresies or fallacies (these two are also buzzwords of the first half of
the twentieth century) which were implicit, if not explicit, in the work of Ransom and Brooks: the
intentional and the affective fallacies.
For them, critics were too frequently prone to two grave errors: that of focusing upon either the
author him/herself, his/her biography and/or his/her intention (all elements external to the text itself) or
the emotions inspired by the poem (its ‘effect’ or ‘affect’ which is again something external to the work).
This was done to the exclusion of attention upon the poem itself which, they argued, was all a critic had
before him/her and, thus, could be sure about.
Conclusion
The New Criticism opposed the interest of earl ier generations in the author’s biography and/or intention,
the object of representation, and the work’s impact upon the reader. In many respects, their emphases
represent the culmin ation of the post -Kanti an quest f or objectiv ity. Whatev er thei r partic ular e mphases,
Arnold, Richards, James, Eliot and many others had all urged an objectiv e approach to criticism. The
New Critics, however, insisted that the only true path to objectivity was by training critical attenti on on the
work to the exclusion of all else. The proper focus of criticism is not upon circumstances external (or
extrinsic) to the work but the work itself in all its verbal detail (those intrinsic formal details). New Critics
warn, in a way that became critical dogma for decades afterwards, against procedures of reading which
would lead the critic away from the work itself. They offer in their place a purely formalist approach that
eschews all reference to the author’s life and purposes, what the work represents, and the work’s
psychological and moral effects upon the audience. Their favourite kind of literary work is lyrical poetry.
The essential component of any lyrical poem is, from thei r perspective, the dicti on itself (the poet’s
