New Criticism

New Criticism emphasizes explication, or "close reading," of "the work itself." It rejects old
historicism's attention to biographical and sociological matters. Instead, the objective
determination as to "how a piece works" can be found through close focus and analysis, rather
than through extraneous and erudite special knowledge. It has long been the pervasive and
standard approach to literature in college and high school curricula.

New Criticism, incorporating Formalism, examines the relationships between a text's ideas and
its form, between what a text says and the way it says it. New Critics "may find tension, irony,
or paradox in this relation, but they usually resolve it into unity and coherence of meaning"
(Biddle 100). New Criticism attempts to be a science of literature, with a technical vocabulary,
some of which we all had to learn in junior high school English classes (third-person,
denoument, etc.). Working with patterns of sound, imagery, narrative structure, point of view,
and other techniques discernible on close reading of the text, they seek to determine the function
and appropriateness of these to the self-contained work.

New Critics, especially American ones in the 1940s and 1950s, attacked the standard notion of
"expressive realism," the romantic fallacy that literature is the efflux of a noble soul, that for
example love pours out onto the page in 14 iambic pentameter lines rhyming ABABCD etc. The
goal then is not the pursuit of sincerity or authenticity, but subtlety, unity, and integrity--and
these are properties of the text, not the author. The work is not the author's; it was detached at
birth. The author's intentions are "neither available nor desirable" (nor even to be taken at face
value when supposedly found in direct statements by authors). Meaning exists on the page.
Thus, New Critics insist that the meaning of a text is intrinsic and should not be confused with
the author's intentions nor the work's affective dimension (its impressionistic effects on the
reader). The "intentional fallacy" is when one confuses the meaning of a work with the author's
purported intention (expressed in letters, diaries, interviews, for example). The "affective
fallacy" is the erroneous practice of interpreting texts according to the psychological or
emotional responses of readers, confusing the text with its results.

To do New Critical reading, ask yourself, "How does this piece work?" Look for complexities in
the text: paradoxes, ironies, ambiguities. Find a unifying idea or theme which resolves these
tensions.

Literary Critical Theory:

Interpretive Strategies

Historicism considers the literary work in light of "what really happened" during the period
reflected in that work. It insists that to understand a piece, we need to understand the author's
biography and social background, ideas circulating at the time, and the cultural milieu.
Historicism also "finds significance in the ways a particular work resembles or differs from
other works of its period and/or genre," and therefore may involve source studies. It may also
include examination of philology and linguistics. It is typically a discipline involving
impressively extensive research.

New Criticism examines the relationships between a text's ideas and its form, "the connection
between what a text says and the way it's said." New Critics/Formalists "may find tension, irony,
or paradox in this relation, but they usually resolve it into unity and coherence of meaning."
New Critics look for patterns of sound, imagery, narrative structure, point of view, and other
techniques discernible on close reading of "the work itself." They insist that the meaning of a
text should not be confused with the author's intentions nor the text's affective dimension--its
effects on the reader. The objective determination as to "how a piece works" can be found
through close focus and analysis, rather than through extraneous and erudite special knowledge.

Archetypal criticism "traces cultural and psychological 'myths' that shape the meaning of texts."
It argues that "certain literary archetypes determine the structure and function of individual
literary works," and therefore that literature imitates not the world but rather the "total dream of
humankind." Archetypes (recurring images or symbols, patterns, universal experiences) may
include motifs such as the quest or the heavenly ascent, symbols such as the apple or snake, or
images such as crucifixion--all laden with meaning already when employed in a particular
work.

Psychoanalytic criticism adopts the methods of "reading" employed by Freud and later theorists
to interpret what a text really indicates. It argues that "unresolved and sometimes unconscious
ambivalences in the author's own life may lead to a disunified literary work," and that the
literary work is a manifestation of the author's own neuroses. Psychoanalytic critics focus on
apparent dilemmas and conflicts in a work and "attempt to read an author's own family life and
traumas into the actions of their characters," realizing that the psychological material will be
expressed indirectly, encoded (similar to dreams) through principles such as "condensation,"
"displacement," and "symbolism."

Feminist criticism critiques patriarchal language and literature by exposing how a work reflects
masculine ideology. It examines gender politics in works and traces the subtle construction of
masculinity and femininity, and their relative status, positionings, and marginalizations within
works.

Marxist criticism argues that literature reflects social institutions and that it is one itself, with a
particular ideological function: that literature participates in the series of struggles between
oppressed and oppressing classes which makes up human history. Similar to Marx's historical
theory, Marxist criticism will focus on the distribution of resources, materialism, class conflict,
or the author's analysis of class relations. It examines how some works attempt to shore up an
oppressive social order or how they idealize social conflict out of existence, how others offer an
alternative collective life or propose a utopian vision as a solution.

Cultural criticism questions traditional value hierarchies and takes a cross-disciplinary

approach to works traditionally marginalized by the aesthetic ideology of white European males.
Instead of more attention to the canon, cultural studies examines works by minority ethnic
groups and postcolonial writers, and the products of folk, urban, and mass culture. Popular
literature, soap opera, rock and rap music, cartoons, professional wrestling, food, etc. -- all fall
within the domain of cultural criticism. We are focusing on it particularly as it concerns
questioning the ways Western cultural tradition expressed in literature defines itself partly by
stifling the voices of oppressed groups or even by demonizing those groups. We will focus on
how literary tradition has constructed models of identity for oppressed groups, how these groups
have constructed oppositional literary identities, and how different communities of readers
might interpret the same text differently due to varied value systems.

New Historicism "finds meaning by looking at a text within the framework of the prevailing
ideas and assumptions of its historical era, or by considering its contents within a context of
'what really happened' during the period that produced the text." New Historicists concern
themselves with the political function of literature and with the concept of power, "the complex
means by which societies produce and reproduce themselves." These critics focus on revealing
the historically specific model of truth and authority reflected in a given work.

Reader-Response criticism "insists that all literature is a structure of experience, not just a form
or meaning," and therefore focuses on finding meaning in the act of reading itself and examines
the ways individual readers or communities of readers experience texts. These critics examine
how the reader joins with the author "to help the text mean." They determine what kind of reader
or what community of readers the work implies and helps to create. They examine "the
significance of the series of interpretations the reader goes through in the process of reading."

Deconstruction is a recent school of criticism which ventures beyond the structuralists'

assertion that all aspects of human culture are fundamentally languages--complex systems of
signs: signifieds (concepts) and signifiers (verbal or non-verbal--and that therefore a quasi-
scientific formalism is available for approaching literature (and advertising, fashion, food, etc.).
Deconstructionists oppose the "metaphysics of presence," that is, the claim of literature or
philosophy that we can find some full, rich meaning outside of or prior to language itself. Like
formalists, these critics also look "at the relation of a text's ideas to the way the ideas are
expressed. Unlike formalists, though, deconstructionists find meaning in the ways the text
breaks down: for instance, in the ways the rhetoric contradicts the ostensible message."
Deconstructive criticism "typically argues that a particular literary, historical, or philosophical
work both claims to possess full and immediate presence and admits the impossibility of
attaining such presence,"--that texts, rather than revealing the New Critic's "unities," actually
dismantle themselves due to their intertwined, inevitably opposite "discourses" (strands of
narrative, threads of meaning).

Psychoanalytic Criticism

Psychoanalytic criticism adopts the methods of "reading" employed by Freud and later theorists
to interpret texts. It argues that literary texts, like dreams, express the secret unconscious desires
and anxieties of the author, that a literary work is a manifestation of the author's own neuroses.
One may psychoanalyze a particular character within a literary work, but it is usually assumed
that all such characters are projections of the author's psyche.

One interesting facet of this approach is that it validates the importance of literature, as it is built
on a literary key for the decoding. Freud himself wrote, "The dream-thoughts which we first
come across as we proceed with our analysis often strike us by the unusual form in which they
are expressed; they are not clothed in the prosaic language usually employed by our thoughts,
but are on the contrary represented symbolically by means of similes and metaphors, in images
resembling those of poetic speech" (26).

Like psychoanalysis itself, this critical endeavor seeks evidence of unresolved emotions,
psychological conflicts, guilts, ambivalences, and so forth within what may well be a disunified
literary work. The author's own childhood traumas, family life, sexual conflicts, fixations, and
such will be traceable within the behavior of the characters in the literary work. But
psychological material will be expressed indirectly, disguised, or encoded (as in dreams)
through principles such as "symbolism" (the repressed object represented in disguise),
"condensation" (several thoughts or persons represented in a single image), and "displacement"
(anxiety located onto another image by means of association).

Despite the importance of the author here, psychoanalytic criticism is similar to New Criticism
in not concerning itself with "what the author intended." But what the author never intended
(that is, repressed) is sought. The unconscious material has been distorted by the censoring
conscious mind.

Psychoanalytic critics will ask such questions as, "What is Hamlet's problem?" or "Why can't
Brontë seem to portray any positive mother figures?"

Feminism

Sooner or later in an Introduction to Literature class, we need to discuss "the F word":

Feminism. I don't understand statements of this sort:

• I think that the media exploits women's bodies, sure, but I'm not one of those feminists!
• I think it sucks that women get 71¢ on the dollar compared to men for equal work, but I'm
not one of those feminists!
• I think the fact that "she was askin' fer it" is a viable defense in spousal abuse and rape
cases in Idaho shows a touch of injustice, but I'm sure not one of those feminists!

Who turned "feminist" into a dirty word? (Probably George Bush and that batch; Pat Robertson
occasionally rants against "witches, lesbians, and feminists.")

Feminist literary criticism, arising in conjunction with sociopolitical feminism, critiques

patriarchal language and literature by exposing how these reflect masculine ideology. It
examines gender politics in works and traces the subtle construction of masculinity and
femininity, and their relative status, positionings, and marginalizations within works.

Beyond making us aware of the marginalizing uses of traditional language (the

presumptuousness of the pronoun "he," or occupational words such as "mailman") feminists
focused on language have noticed a stylistic difference in women's writing: women tend to use
reflexive constructions more than men (e.g., "She found herself crying"). They have noticed that
women and men tend to communicate differently: men directed towards solutions, women
towards connecting.

Feminist criticism concern itself with stereotypical representations of genders. It also may trace
the history of relatively unknown or undervalued women writers, potentially earning them their
rightful place within the literary canon, and helps create a climate in which women's creativity
may be fully realized and appreciated.

One will frequently hear the term "patriarchy" used among feminist critics, referring to
traditional male-dominated society. "Marginalization" refers to being forced to the outskirts of
what is considered socially and politically significant; the female voice was traditionally
marginalized, or discounted altogether.

Marxism

Karl Marx (1818-1883) was primarily a theorist and historian (less the evil pinko commie
demon that McCarthyism fretted about). After examining social organization in a scientific way
(thereby creating a methodology for social science: political science), he perceived human
history to have consisted of a series of struggles between classes--between the oppressed and the
oppressing. Whereas Freud saw "sexual energy" to be the motivating factor behind human
endeavor and Nabokov seemed to feel artistic impulse was the real factor, Marx thought that
"historical materialism" was the ultimate driving force, a notion involving the distribution of
resources, gain, production, and such matters.

The supposedly "natural" political evolution involved

(and would in the future involve) "feudalism" leading to
"bourgeois capitalism" leading to "socialism" and finally to
"utopian communism." In bourgeois capitalism,
the privileged bourgeoisie rely on the
proletariat--the labor force responsible for survival.
Marx theorized that when profits are not reinvested
in the workers but in creating more factories, the workers will grow poorer and poorer until no
short-term patching is possible or successful. At a crisis point, revolt will lead to a restructuring
of the system.

For a political system to be considered communist, the underclasses must own the means of
production--not the government nor the police force. Therefore, aside from certain first-century
Christian communities and other temporary communes, communism has not yet really existed.
(The Soviet Union was actually state-run capitalism.)

Marx is known also for saying that "Religion is the opiate of the people," so he was
somewhat aware of the problem that Lenin later dwelt on. Lenin was convinced that workers
remain largely unaware of their own oppression since they are convinced by the state to be
selfless. One might point to many "opiates of the people" under most political systems--
diversions that prevent real consideration of trying to change unjust economic conditions.

Marxist Criticism
 According to Marxists, and to other scholars in fact, literature reflects those social
institutions out of which it emerges and is itself a social institution with a particular ideological
function. Literature reflects class struggle and materialism: think how often the quest for wealth
traditionally defines characters. So Marxists generally view literature "not as works created in
accordance with timeless artistic criteria, but as 'products' of the economic and ideological
determinants specific to that era" (Abrams 149). Literature reflects an author's own class or
analysis of class relations, however piercing or shallow that analysis may be.

The Marxist critic simply is a careful reader or viewer who keeps in mind issues of power
and money, and any of the following kinds of questions:

• What role does class play in the work; what is the author's analysis of class relations?
• How do characters overcome oppression?
• In what ways does the work serve as propaganda for the status quo; or does it try to
undermine it?
• What does the work say about oppression; or are social conflicts ignored or blamed
elsewhere?
• Does the work propose some form of utopian vision as a solution to the problems
encountered in the work?
• Reader-Response Criticism
• Reader-Response criticism is not a subjective, impressionistic free-for-all, nor a
legitimizing of all half-baked, arbitrary, personal comments on literary works. Instead, it
is a school of criticism which emerged in the 1970s, focused on finding meaning in the
act of reading itself and examining the ways individual readers or communities of readers
experience texts. These critics raise theoretical questions regarding how the reader joins
with the author "to help the text mean." They determine what kind of reader or what
community of readers the work implies and helps to create. They also may examine the
significance of the series of interpretations the reader undergoes in the reading process.
• Like New Critics, reader-response critics focus on what texts do; but instead of regarding
texts as self-contained entities, reader-response criticism plunges into what the New
Critics called the affective fallacy: what do texts do in the minds of the readers? In fact, a
text can exist only as activated by the mind of the reader. Thus, where formalists saw
texts as spacial, reader-response critics view them as temporal phenomena.( it changes
when it is read again) And, as Stanley Fish states, "It is not that the presence of poetic
qualities compels a certain kind of attention but that the paying of a certain kind of
attention results in the emergence of poetic qualities. . . . Interpretation is not the art of
construing but the art of constructing. Interpreters do not decode poems; they make them"
(326-327).

Cultural Criticism

Cultural criticism, or cultural studies, is related to New Historicism but with a particular and
cross-disciplinary emphasis on taking seriously those works traditionally marginalized by the
aesthetic ideology of white European males. It examines social, economic, and political
conditions that effect institutions and products such as literature and questions traditional value
hierarchies. Thus it scrutinizes the habitual privileging of race, class, and gender, and also
subverts the standard distinctions between "high art" and low. Instead of more attention to the
canon, cultural studies examines works by minority ethnic groups and postcolonial writers, the
products of folk, urban, and mass culture. Popular literature, soap opera, rock and rap music,
cartoons, professional wrestling, food, etc. -- all fall within the domain of cultural criticism.

Obviously the field of cultural criticism is broad. We will focus on it particularly as it concerns
itself with questioning the ways Western cultural tradition expressed in literature defines itself
partly by stifling the voices of oppressed groups or even by demonizing those groups. We will
focus on how literary tradition has constructed models of identity for oppressed groups, how
these groups have constructed oppositional literary identities, and how different communities of
readers might interpret the same text differently due to varied value systems.

New Historicism

Historical Criticism insisted that to understand a literary piece, we need to understand the
author's biography and social background, ideas circulating at the time, and the cultural milieu.
This school of criticism fell into disfavor as the New Critics emerged.

New Historicism seeks to find meaning in a text by considering the work within the framework
of the prevailing ideas and assumptions of its historical era. New Historicists concern
themselves with the political function of literature and with the concept of power, the intricate
means by which cultures produce and reproduce themselves. These critics focus on revealing the
historically specific model of truth and authority (not a "truth" but a "cultural construct")
reflected in a given work.

In other words, history here is not a mere chronicle of facts and events, but rather a complex
description of human reality and evolution of preconceived notions. Literary works may or may
not tell us about various factual aspects of the world from which they emerge, but they will tell
us about prevailing ways of thinking at the time: ideas of social organization, prejudices, taboos,
etc. They raise questions of interest to anthropologists and sociologists.

New Historicism is more "sociohistorical" than it is a delving into factoids: concerned with
ideological products or cultural constructs which are formations of any era. (It's not just where
would Keats have seen a Grecian urn in England, but from where he may have absorbed the
definitions of art and beauty.)

So, New Historicists, insisting that ideology manifests itself in literary productions and
discourse, interest themselves in the interpretive constructions which the members of a society
or culture apply to their experience.

Structuralism
Post-Structuralism
Deconstruction

STRUCTURALIST CRITICISM
Structuralism is concerned not so much with what things mean, but how they mean; it is a
science designed to show that all elements of human culture, including literature, are
understandable as parts of a system of signs. This science of signs is called "semiotics" or
"semiology." The goal is to discover the codes, structures, and processes involved in the
production of meaning. "Structuralism claims that human culture itself is fundamentally a
language, a complex system of signifieds (concepts) and signifiers. These signifiers can be
verbal (like language itself or literature) or nonverbal (like face painting, advertising, or
fashion)" (Biddle 80). Thus, linguistics is to language as structuralism is to literature.

Structuralists often would break myths into their smallest units, and realign corresponding ones.
Opposite terms modulate until resolved or reconciled by an intermediary third term.

Structuralism was a reaction to modern alienation and despair; it sought to recover literature
from the isolation in which it had been studied, since laws governing it govern all sign systems -
- clothing, food, body 'language,' etc.

What quickly became apparent, though, was that signs and words don't have meaning in and of
themselves, only in relations to other signs and entire systems. Hence, post-structuralism.

POST-STRUCTURALISM

Post-structuralism contests and subverts structuralism and formalism. Structuralists are

convinced that systematic knowledge is possible; post-structuralists claim to know only the
impossibility of this knowledge. They counter the possibility of knowing systematically a text
by revealing the "grammar" behind its form and meaning. Texts contradict not only the
structuralist accounts of them, but also themselves. All signifieds are also signifiers (a car
symbolizes achievement).

DECONSTRUCTION

Deconstructive criticism posits an undecidability of meaning for all texts. The text has
intertwined and contradictory discourses, gaps, and incoherencies, since language itself is
unstable and arbitrary. The critic doesn't undermine the text; the text already dismantles itself.
Its rhetoric subverts or undermines its ostensible meaning.

Jacques Derrida opposed the "metaphysics of presence, . . . the claim in literature or philosophy
that we can find some full, rich meaning outside of or prior to language itself." The hierarchy of
binaries on which this assertion rests is untenable. Privileging speech over writing =
logocentrism; spoken or written words have meaning only by "differance" from other words.
Deconstructive critics focus on the text like the formalists, but direct attention to the opposite of
the New Critical "unities." Instead, they view the "decentering" of texts and point out
incompatabilities, rhetorical grain-against-grain contradictions, undecidability within texts.
There is often a playfulness to deconstruction, but it can be daunting to read too.

Conclusion
We've mined much material, discussion, and speculative lunacy out of these literary works this
semester. What if we were wrong? What was the point?

If what we determined about the meanings of these works was indeed consciously intended by
the authors?

Then we've been translating the implications, bringing the subtler message out into the open,
articulating the nuances for what ideally can be our hightened awareness and our better selves.

If not consciously done, but the text itself does convey and contain the richer meanings than
intended by the author?

Why stop at exactly what was intended? Freudian slips are reflections of deeper workings
beyond face value. What if not the author but the work speaks for an age and a culture, or
humanity? Value systems and problems are perpetuated every day without one single person
being responsible. Art is more important than the author. We reevaluate, recreate the text anew
ourselves.

But what if our meanings were not intended by the author AND are not at all in the text? What if
our creative interpretation indeed went too far?

Well, at least we're practicing our "reading" and reasoning skills. It's the human impulse to
discover a point, to find meaning in experience, and typically there is no author or authority
figure assuring us that what we decide for ourselves is indeed the objective intended purpose of
our lives. So we've made dynamic sense of an enigma; more power to us.

The liberal arts are supposed to liberate us, give us control over the bombardment of values and
experiences which oppress if not baffle us daily. This is especially crucial now in an age of
imitation, cloning, and anti-identity (e.g., originality points for lip-synching).

Besides, as Buzz says in Rebel Without a Cause, "You've gotta do something."

 Literary Critical Theory
Background

What are my first questions for this course?

• What is literature?
• What are we supposed to do with it? How do we approach literature?

Critical theory articulates what we bring to literature, which presumably determines what we get
out of it. This is not a chaos of subjectivity. Instead, critical theory tries to examine what types
of questions we should pose about literary works.

What does "common sense" say about this? That literature is about life, or is a reflection of life
written from personal experience? That we study literature in order to "appreciate" something:

• an historical time period and what life was like then?

• or a particular author's ideas and feelings?

These indeed were the standard and unarticulated assumptions about literature traditionally.

HISTORICAL / BIOGRAPHICAL CRITICISM

Until well into the 20th century, much of literary study was based on the assumption that to
understand a work you need to understand the author's social background, the author's life, ideas
circulating during the time the author was writing, what other works influenced the creation of
the one under examination, and so on. Most book introductions still offer this kind of material.
Valuable literature, therefore, is that which tells us truths about the period which produced them.
We are getting, according to this approach, a vision of human nature or the world in general as
filtered through an author's individual insight and perceptions.

One problem with this assumption is that it requires a crash course in matters falling outside the
work itself. The reader presumably must rely on an expert's special knowledge before being able
to "appreciate" the work, and this makes the study of literature rather elitist. Literature seen this
way seems dismissed almost, or at least presented as simply a way of arriving at something
anterior to itself: the convictions of the author or that author's experience as part of a specific
society. And so why not just study history?

EXPRESSIVE REALISM

When the Aristotelian concept that art is an imitation of reality fused with the Romantic
conviction that poetry is a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, the "expressive realist"
notion took hold, insisting that truly authentic and valuable works are those expressing the
perceptions and emotions of a person of sensibility. Thus we gush about how well an author
captured the whale-killing experience or conveyed his or her vision of love during the Civil
War. But critic Northrup Frye objects to this attitude:

The absurd quantum formula of criticism, the assertion that the critic should confine himself to
'getting out' of a poem exactly what the poet may vaguely be assumed to have been aware of
'putting in', is one of the many slovenly illiteracies that the absence of systematic criticism has
allowed to grow up. This quantum theory is the literary form of what may be called the fallacy
of premature teleology. It corresponds, in the natural sciences, to the assertion that a
phenomenon is as it is because Providence in its inscrutable wisdom made it so. That is, the
critic is assumed to have no conceptual framework: it is simply his job to take a poem into
which a poet has diligently stuffed a specific number of beauties or effects, and complacently
extract them one by one, like his prototype Little Jack Horner. (qtd. in Belsey 27)

Both of the above approaches have fallen under attack in recent decades by scholars objecting to
the inherent elitism of the approaches, or the notion of the reader being in the position of passive
consumer of literature, or in some cases how these approaches make literary criticism parasitic
on literature.

Before we involve ourselves with their approaches, here are some terms designed to codify the
most general tendencies in literary criticism.

THEORETICAL CRITICISM

proposes a theory of literature and general principles as to how to approach it; criteria for
evaluation emerge.

PRACTICAL / APPLIED CRITICISM

discusses particular works and authors; the theoretical principles are implicit within the analysis
or interpretation.

IMPRESSIONISTIC CRITICISM

"appreciates" the responses evoked by works of literaturewith oohs and ahhs regarding "the
soul" and declarations of "masterpieces."

JUDICIAL CRITICISM

attempts to analyze and explain those effects through the basic forms of "dissection": subject,
style, organization, techniques.

MIMETIC CRITICISM

seeks to evaluate literature as an imitation or representation of life.

PRAGMATIC CRITICISM
decides how well a work achieves its aims due to the author's strategies.

EXPRESSIVE CRITICISM

gushes about how well an author expressed or conveyed him or herself, his or her visions and
feelings.

TEXTUAL CRITICISM

aims to establish an accurate uncorrupted original text identical with what the author intended.
This may involve collating manuscripts and printed versions, deciding on the validity of
rediscovered versions or chapters, deciphering damaged manuscripts and illegible handwriting,
etc. One medieval problem, for example, is that of minims: ƒ ƒ ƒ ƒ ƒ ƒ ƒ ƒ ƒ ƒ ƒ ƒ ƒ ƒ ƒ =
minimum.