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NEW CRTICISM APPROACH

New Criticism is one of the structuralism approaches to literature. It developed in English and American literary criticism during the mid twentieth century. This approach emphasizes on close reading or internal characteristics of the work itself. In other words, it refuses the use of external evidence of the work; including historical, biographical, and sociological aspects. The New Critics avoided criticizing those three approaches, as they might enable be included by other disciplines.

It is in evidence that New Criticism is examining he relationship between a text’s notions and forms. Furthermore, it focuses on formal aspects, such as; rhythm; meter; theme; imagery; metaphor; paradox; irony; narrative structures; point of view; and other intrinsic matters of the work. The New Critics use this approach to determine the function and appropriateness of all these to the work’s content and meaning.

Some figures contributed to this approach are Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Cleanth Brooks. Once, the New Critics complimented Coleridge’s works, as its contents were completely unified and reconciled its internal conflicts as well as reached such a rhythmical and enchanting ending. According to Cleanth Brooks, in the interpretation of canonical works of poetry, the poet should be able to create internal paradoxes. Under New Critical analysis, the poem is known as a solid structure of meaning.

Furthermore, the New Critics refuse approaches which consider the poem as an attempt at representing the real universe. Again, in accordance with Brooks that there is such a complex but precise meaning in a poem. So, he thought that it is inevitably distorting in attempting to paraphrase it. Besides Coleridge and Brooks, there are other New Critical figures, such as; T.S. Eliot; F.R. Leavis; John Crowe Ransom; and Robert Penn Warren.

In addition, in viewing the poem, the New Critics consider it the purest exemplification of the literary values and they privileged poetry as a nified form of literary works. Since New Criticism excludes external matters, it rejects many perspectives for understanding the text, including historicism, sociological, as well as autobiographical approaches.