Note on New Criticism

The school of criticism called ‘New Criticism’ got its name from the title of the book The New Criticism (1941) written by John Crowe Ransom. The term came to be applied to theory and practice that was prominent in American literary criticism until late in the 1960s. The school opposed the prevailing interest in the biographies of authors, the social context of literature, and literary history. It states that the proper concern of literary criticism is not with the external circumstances or effects or historical position of a work, but with a detailed consideration of the work itself as an independent entity. 

    The method of New Criticism focuses on a close reading of rhythm, meter, theme, imagery, metaphor, etc. According to the intentional fallacy, it’s impossible to determine an author's reasons for writing a text as an appropriate basis for deciding upon the meaning or value of a work .The text itself carries its own Value. The affective fallacy is a literary term that refers to the supposed error of evaluating or judging a work on the basis of its emotional effects on a reader. The New Critics states that work should not be understood in relation to the responses of its readers. The merit (and meaning) of a literary work must be inherent. The New Critics favoured poetry over other literary forms because for them poetry is the purest exemplification of the literary values which they upheld. Still, the techniques like close reading and structural analysis of the works are also applied to drama, novel, and other literary forms.