NEW CRITICAL ANALYSIS

The New Criticism emerged in the early 20th century in response to a combination of both political and cultural developments, but in literary terms we might see it as a "corrective" to the easy-going "impressionism" of earlier critical writing. As much as they abhorred the new "scientism" that passed for authority in the modern era, the New Critics believed the study of literature could be more organized and systematic than it had been in the past. Specifically, they believed they could isolate the object of their work just as other "sciences" had isolated their objects of study. For the New Critic, the province or object of the activity of criticism would be the text "itself"--not its historical context, not its author, not its bibliographic history--these were specialized areas of inquiry "scholars" might worry about in the privacy of some graduate library. What the New Critics wanted to discuss was the part of literature that made literature "literary" to begin with: its FORMAL characteristics.

What are those characteristics? What items can be found in a work of literary art that define it as literary and as "art"? Well, there are IMAGES, groups of words that cohere visually; there are SYMBOLS, nouns which stand for something more than themselves; there are SIMILES and METAPHORS, words used figuratively to suggest comparisons or amplify certain meanings; and there are literally scores other TROPES (figurative uses of language)--METONYMY, SYNECDOCHE, IRONY--in which language is used in other-than-common ways to produce more complex relations among words that are "literary" than those we find in "common" language. Indeed, "complexity" is often thought of as one of the defining characteristics of literature--poetry especially, and this conception can be traced to the New Critics. As critical anthologist Keith Booker has pointed out, if it seems to us that this conception is older than our century--that is, that "literature" has always been "complex," we should credit the power of the New Criticism as a pedagogical force over the last 70 years. For once its outlook spread through the university system and succeeded in "working" for students over three generations, those students (some of whom became teachers, etc. etc.) finally forgot that "New Criticism" was ever "new" at all--and thus this approach to literature as a complex FORM became "Criticism" as such.

Booker is right to point out that there are many signs of the loosening of New Criticism's hold on students in this country--but not all of them, I would say, are so auspicious of some wonderful "liberation" as Booker implies. Most of all what has been lost is the New Critic's habit of CLOSE READING, which demanded the patience to investigate literature closely enough that we can see how it really "works." And this is what New Criticism does in practice. Asking questions like the following, the New Critic will at least get "in touch" with many of the formal characteristics good criticism of all kinds might put to rhetorical use.

How DOES a succession of images suggest a DIRECTION in a poem?

How DOES a METAPHOR links some words with a deeper set of ideas suggested in others?

How DO certain combinations of IMAGES, METAPHORS, and SYMBOLS create IRONY or TENSION among different figures in a poem?

And, ultimately, HOW do all these formal characteristics demonstrate the poem's SELF-SUFFICIENCY, or UNITY?

Again, what makes language "poetry" for the New Critic might be a certain complexity of form. What makes it GREAT art would be its ability to exist in and of itself, to TRANSCEND its historical circumstances by supplying within itself all it needs to BE.

• Choose a short poem that seems to offer some formal complexity.
• Begin with the basics. Weave into a single sentence the poet, title of the poem, poetic genre (i.e. if it's a sonnet, say so), e.g.: "In his sonnet, "Design," Robert Frost presents us with a scene any of us might find in the corner of our kitchen."
• Move in a single direction, addressing coherent formal units--phrases, lines, stanzas. How far do you break it down? Do you treat every phrase, or just every stanza? The answer will depend on the complexity of the phrases, lines, stanzas in the poem. Only if a phrase or single word is highly charged--suggesting not one meaning but several, each of which COUNT-- does it usually deserve its own treatment.
• Pay attention to AT LEAST the poem's diction (word choice), image, metaphor, structure (how is it organized and presented? long lines or short? why?), irony (if any), ambiguity (if any).
• Demonstrate how the poem "works" as a single unit--how all of its elements (as above) work to form a coherent and complex ensemble of meaning. Or, demonstrate how this is NOT the case.
• Have all this figured out before you begin to write. Map out or sketch these formal relations on a piece of paper first, and then write 2 or 3 drafts of this essay.

DON'T:

• Choose a long poem you cannot analyze (or can analyze only cursively) in 3-4 pages.
• Begin with the poet's name, as in "Robert Frost, in his sonnet "Design," presents us...."
• Start at the end, move to the beginning, and then discuss the middle of your poem. Poems are written to be read from top to bottom, left to right--their "coherence" depends on that direction, and since you are out to trace that coherence, move in that direction.
• Address only one or two aspects of form. The poem is complex. You should be too.
• "Force" the issue by paying close attention to words that ultimately do not play a large part in the poem. Don't address "form for "form's sake." Remember, you're trying to show how each formal characteristic works with all the others.
• Bother much with the poem's "theme." If you do, don't argue for it. Don't guess what the poem "means" (remember MacLeish: "a poem should not mean, but be"). If you mention it, make sure you mention it only BECAUSE the poem's form reinforces it.
• Write a conclusion unless it underscores the poem's unity, self-sufficiency, or transcendent power.