CHAPTER 3

The Formalist Critics

Cleanth Brooks

AL
Published (1951) in The Raritan Review, this polemic in favor of the New Criticism was

RI
written by one of the major practitioners and promoters of the new approach to
literature – Cleanth Brooks. Brooks had studied in Cambridge with I. A. Richards, who first

TE
laid the foundation for the New Criticism in his Principles of Literary Criticism (1924).
Upon his return to the United States, Brooks began writing a series of books, from
An Approach to Literature (1936) to The Well‐Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of
MA
Poetry (1947), that helped establish “close reading” as the dominant form of literary study
in the American academy from the 1940s through the late 1960s.
D

Here are some articles of faith I could subscribe to:

TE

That literary criticism is a description and an evaluation of its object.

That the primary concern of criticism is with the problem of unity – the kind of whole
GH

which the literary work forms or fails to form, and the relation of the various parts to
each other in building up this whole.
That the formal relations in a work of literature may include, but certainly exceed, those of
RI

logic.
That in a successful work, form and content cannot be separated.
PY

That form is meaning.

That literature is ultimately metaphorical and symbolic.
That the general and the universal are not seized upon by abstraction, but got at through
CO

the concrete and the particular.

That literature is not a surrogate for religion.
That, as Allen Tate says, “specific moral problems” are the subject matter of literature, but
that the purpose of literature is not to point a moral.
That the principles of criticism define the area relevant to literary criticism; they do not
constitute a method for carrying out the criticism.

Original publication details: Cleanth Brooks, “The Formalist Critics” from The Kenyon Review OS XIII.1
(Winter 1951). Reproduced with permission from The Kenyon Review.

Literary Theory: An Anthology, Third Edition. Edited by Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan.
© 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2017 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
16 Formalisms

Such statements as these would not, however, even though greatly elaborated, serve any
useful purpose here. The interested reader already knows the general nature of the
­critical position adumbrated – or, if he does not, he can find it set forth in writings of
mine or of other critics of like sympathy. Moreover, a condensed restatement of the
­position here would probably beget as many misunderstandings as have past attempts to
set it forth. It seems much more profitable to use the present occasion for dealing with
some persistent misunderstandings and objections.
In the first place, to make the poem or the novel the central concern of criticism has
appeared to mean cutting it loose from its author and from his life as a man, with his own
particular hopes, fears, interests, conflicts, etc. A criticism so limited may seem bloodless
and hollow. It will seem so to the typical professor of literature in the graduate school,
where the study of literature is still primarily a study of the ideas and personality of the
author as revealed in his letters, his diaries, and the recorded conversations of his friends.
It will certainly seem so to literary gossip columnists who purvey literary chitchat. It may
also seem so to the young poet or novelist, beset with his own problems of composition
and with his struggles to find a subject and a style and to get a hearing for himself.
In the second place, to emphasize the work seems to involve severing it from those
who actually read it, and this severance may seem drastic and therefore disastrous. After
all, literature is written to be read. Wordsworth’s poet was a man speaking to men.
In each Sunday Times, Mr J. Donald Adams points out that the hungry sheep look up
and are not fed; and less strenuous moralists than Mr Adams are bound to feel a proper
revulsion against “mere aestheticism.” Moreover, if we neglect the audience which reads
the work, including that for which it was presumably written, the literary historian is
prompt to point out that the kind of audience that Pope had did condition the kind of
poetry that he wrote. The poem has its roots in history, past or present. Its place in the
historical context simply cannot be ignored.
I have stated these objections as sharply as I can because I am sympathetic with the
state of mind which is prone to voice them. Man’s experience is indeed a seamless
­garment, no part of which can be separated from the rest. Yet if we urge this fact, of
inseparability against the drawing of distinctions, then there is no point in talking about
criticism at all. I am assuming that distinctions are necessary and useful and indeed
inevitable.
The formalist critic knows as well as anyone that poems and plays and novels are written
by men – that they do not somehow happen – and that they are written as expressions of
particular personalities and are written from all sorts of motives – for money, from a desire
to express oneself, for the sake of a cause, etc. Moreover, the formalist critic knows as well
as anyone that literary works are mere potential until they are read – that is, that they are
recreated in the minds of actual readers, who vary enormously in their capabilities, their
interests, their prejudices, their ideas. But the formalist critic is concerned primarily with
the work itself. Speculation on the mental processes of the author takes the critic away
from the work into biography and psychology. There is no reason, of course, why he should
not turn away into biography and psychology. Such explorations are very much worth
making. But they should not be confused with an account of the work. Such studies
describe the process of composition, not the structure of the thing composed, and they
may be ­performed quite as validly for the poor work as for the good one. They may be
validly performed for any kind of expression – nonliterary as well as literary.
On the other hand, exploration of the various readings which the work has received also
takes the critic away from the work into psychology and the history of taste. The various
 The Formalist Critics 17

imports of a given work may well be worth studying. I. A. Richards has put us all in his
debt by demonstrating what different experiences may be derived from the same poem by
an apparently homogeneous group of readers; and the scholars have pointed out, all along,
how different Shakespeare appeared to an eighteenth‐century as compared with a
­nineteenth‐century audience; or how sharply divergent are the estimates of John Donne’s
lyrics from historical period to historical period. But such work, valuable and necessary as
it may be, is to be distinguished from a criticism of the work itself. The formalist critic,
because he wants to criticize the work itself, makes two assumptions: (1) he assumes that
the relevant part of the author’s intention is what he got actually into his work; that is, he
assumes that the author’s intention as realized is the “intention” that counts, not ­necessarily
what he was conscious of trying to do, or what he now remembers he was then trying to do.
And (2) the formalist critic assumes an ideal reader: that is, instead of focusing on the
­varying spectrum of possible readings, he attempts to find a central point of reference from
which he can focus upon the structure of the poem or novel.
But there is no ideal reader, someone is prompt to point out, and he will probably add
that it is sheer arrogance that allows the critic, with his own blindsides and prejudice, to
put himself in the position of that ideal reader. There is no ideal reader, of course, and
I suppose that the practicing critic can never be too often reminded of the gap between
his reading and the “true” reading of the poem. But for the purpose of focusing upon the
poem rather than upon his own reactions, it is a defensible strategy. Finally, of course, it
is the strategy that all critics of whatever persuasion are forced to adopt. (The alternatives
are desperate: either we say that one person’s reading is as good as another’s and equate
those readings on a basis of absolute equality and thus deny the possibility of any s­ tandard
reading. Or else we take a lowest common denominator of the various readings that
have been made; that is, we frankly move from literary criticism into socio‐psychology.
To propose taking a consensus of the opinions of “qualified” readers is simply to split the
ideal reader into a group of ideal readers.) As consequences of the distinction just referred
to, the formalist critic rejects two popular tests for literary value. The first proves the
value of the work from the author’s “sincerity” (or the intensity of the author’s feelings
as he composed it). If we heard that Mr Guest testified that he put his heart and soul into
his poems, we would not be very much impressed, though I should see no reason to
doubt such a statement from Mr Guest. It would simply be critically irrelevant. Ernest
Hemingway’s statement in a recent issue of Time magazine that he counts his last novel
his best is of interest for Hemingway’s biography, but most readers of Across the River and
Into the Trees would agree that it proves nothing at all about the value of the novel – that
in this case the judgment is simply pathetically inept. We discount also such tests for
poetry as that proposed by A. E. Housman – the bristling of his beard at the reading of a
good poem. The intensity of his reaction has critical significance only in proportion as we
have already learned to trust him as a reader. Even so, what it tells us is something about
Housman – nothing decisive about the poem.
It is unfortunate if this playing down of such responses seems to deny humanity to
either writer or reader. The critic may enjoy certain works very much and may be indeed
intensely moved by them. I am, and I have no embarrassment in admitting the fact; but
a detailed description of my emotional state on reading certain works has little to do with
indicating to an interested reader what the work is and how the parts of it are related.
Should all criticism, then, be self‐effacing and analytic? I hope that the answer is
implicit in what I have already written, but I shall go on to spell it out. Of course not.
That will depend upon the occasion and the audience. In practice, the critic’s job is
18 Formalisms

rarely a purely critical one. He is much more likely to be involved in dozens of more or
less related tasks, some of them trivial, some of them important. He may be trying to get
a hearing for a new author, or to get the attention of the freshman sitting in the back row.
He may be comparing two authors, or editing a text; writing a brief newspaper review or
reading a paper before the Modern Language Association. He may even be simply talking
with a friend, talking about literature for the hell of it. Parable, anecdote, epigram,
­metaphor – these and a hundred other devices may be thoroughly legitimate for his
­varying purposes. He is certainly not to be asked to suppress his personal enthusiasms or
his interest in social history or in politics. Least of all is he being asked to present his
­criticisms as the close reading of a text. Tact, common sense, and uncommon sense if he
has it, are all requisite if the practicing critic is to do his various jobs well.
But it will do the critic no harm to have a clear idea of what his specific job as a critic
is. I can sympathize with writers who are tired of reading rather drab “critical ­analyses,”
and who recommend brighter, more amateur, and more “human” criticism. As ideals,
these are excellent; as recipes for improving criticism, I have my doubts. Appropriate
vulgarizations of these ideals are already flourishing, and have long flourished – in the
class room presided over by the college lecturer of infectious enthusiasm, in the gossipy
Book‐of‐the‐Month Club bulletins, and in the columns of the Saturday Review of
Literature.
I have assigned the critic a modest, though I think an important, role. With reference
to the help which the critic can give to the practicing artist, the role is even more
­modest. As critic, he can give only negative help. Literature is not written by formula:
he can have no formula to offer. Perhaps he can do little more than indicate whether in
his opinion the work has succeeded or failed. Healthy criticism and healthy creation do
tend to go hand in hand. Everything else being equal, the creative artist is better off for
being in touch with a vigorous criticism. But the other considerations are never equal,
the case is always special, and in a given case the proper advice could be: quit reading
criticism altogether, or read political science or history or philosophy – or join the army,
or join the church.
There is certainly no doubt that the kind of specific and positive help that someone
like Ezra Pound was able to give to several writers of our time is in one sense the most
important kind of criticism that there can be. I think that it is not unrelated to the kind
of criticism that I have described: there is the same intense concern with the text which
is being built up, the same concern with “technical problems.” But many other things
are involved – matters which lie outside the specific ambit of criticism altogether; among
them a knowledge of the personality of the particular writer, the ability to stimulate, to
make positive suggestions.
A literary work is a document and as a document can be analyzed in terms of the
forces that have produced it, or it may be manipulated as a force in its own right.
It mirrors the past, it may influence the future. These facts it would be futile to deny,
and I know of no critic who does deny them. But the reduction of a work of literature
to its causes does not constitute literary criticism; nor does an estimate of its effects.
Good literature is more than effective rhetoric applied to true ideas – even if we could
agree upon a philosophical yardstick for measuring the truth of ideas and even if we
could find some way that ­transcended nose‐counting for determining the effective-
ness of the rhetoric.
A recent essay by Lionel Trilling bears very emphatically upon this point. (I refer to
him the more readily because Trilling has registered some of his objections to the critical
 The Formalist Critics 19

position that I maintain.) In the essay entitled “The Meaning of a Literary Idea,” Trilling
discusses the debt to Freud and Spengler of four American writers, O’Neill, Dos Passos,
Wolfe, and Faulkner. Very justly, as it seems to me, he chooses Faulkner as the
­contemporary writer who, along with Ernest Hemingway, best illustrates the power and
importance of ideas in literature. Trilling is thoroughly aware that his choice will seem
shocking and perhaps perverse, “because,” as he writes, “Hemingway and Faulkner have
insisted on their indifference to the conscious intellectual tradition of our time and
have acquired the reputation of achieving their effects by means that have the least
­possible connection with any sort of intellectuality or even with intelligence.”
Here Trilling shows not only acute discernment but an admirable honesty in electing
to deal with the hard cases – with the writers who do not clearly and easily make the case
for the importance of ideas. I applaud the discernment and the honesty, but I wonder
whether the whole discussion in his essay does not indicate that Trilling is really much
closer to the so‐called “new critics” than perhaps he is aware. For Trilling, one notices,
rejects any simple one‐to‐one relation between the truth of the idea and the value of the
literary work in which it is embodied. Moreover, he does not claim that “recognizable
ideas of a force or weight are ‘used’ in the work,” or “new ideas of a certain force and
weight are ‘produced’ by the work.” He praises rather the fact that we feel that
Hemingway and Faulkner are “intensely at work upon the recalcitrant stuff of life.”
The last point is made the matter of real importance. Whereas Dos Passos, O’Neill, and
Wolfe make us “feel that they feel that they have said the last word,” “we seldom have
the sense that [Hemingway and Faulkner] … have misrepresented to themselves the
nature and the difficulty of the matter they work on.”
Trilling has chosen to state the situation in terms of the writer’s activity (Faulkner is
intensely at work, etc.). But this judgment is plainly an inference from the quality of
Faulkner’s novels – Trilling has not simply heard Faulkner say that he has had to struggle
with his work. (I take it Mr Hemingway’s declaration about the effort he put into the last
novel impresses Trilling as little as it impresses the rest of us.)
Suppose, then, that we tried to state Mr Trilling’s point, not in terms of the effort of
the artist, but in terms of the structure of the work itself. Should we not get something
very like the terms used by the formalist critics? A description in terms of “tensions,” of
symbolic development, of ironies and their resolution? In short, is not the formalist
critic trying to describe in terms of the dynamic form of the work itself how the
­recalcitrancy of the material is acknowledged and dealt with?
Trilling’s definition of “ideas” makes it still easier to accommodate my position to his.
I have already quoted a passage in which he repudiates the notion that one has to show
how recognizable ideas are “used” in the work, or new ideas are “produced” by the work.
He goes on to write: “All that we need to do is account for a certain aesthetic effect as
being in some important part achieved by a mental process which is not different from
the process by which discursive ideas are conceived, and which is to be judged by some
of the criteria by which an idea is judged.” One would have to look far to find a critic
“formal” enough to object to this. What some of us have been at pains to insist upon is
that literature does not simply “exemplify” ideas or “produce” ideas – as Trilling
acknowledges. But no one claims that the writer is an inspired idiot. He uses his mind
and his reader ought to use his, in processes “not different from the process by which
discursive ideas are conceived.” Literature is not inimical to ideas. It thrives upon ideas
but it does not present ideas patly and neatly. It involves them with the “recalcitrant stuff
of life.” The literary critic’s job is to deal with that involvement.
20 Formalisms

The mention of Faulkner invites a closing comment upon the critic’s specific job.
As I have described it, it may seem so modest that one could take its performance for
granted. But consider the misreadings of Faulkner now current, some of them the
work of the most brilliant critics that we have, some of them quite wrong‐headed, and
demonstrably so. What is true of Faulkner is only less true of many another author,
including many writers of the past. Literature has many “uses” – and critics propose
new uses, some of them exciting and spectacular. But all the multiform uses to which
literature can be put rest finally upon our knowing what a given work “means.” That
knowledge is basic.