“New Criticism” is a trend in literary criticism of the mid- 20th century , a kind of formal method in literary criticism .
USA
“New Criticism” in the United States formed in the 1930s and became dominant in the 1940s and 50s. The theoretical foundations of the course were laid by Allen Tate and other authors, and it got its name from the book by John Ransom The New Criticism .
The main method of analyzing the text from the point of view of “New Criticism” is “deep reading” ( Close reading ) - a comprehensive disclosure of the private and general meaning of each phrase, the study of symbolism, figurative system and underlying motives embedded in the work of the author.
The isolation of the “New Criticism” exclusively in the literary work and the disregard for the personality of the author and the historical and social context caused the flaws in the methodology and the subsequent crisis of the course.
France
“New criticism” in France arose in the 1950s and was the result of the application of the principles of structuralism in literary criticism. The theoretical foundations of the French direction laid Roland Barth .
By the beginning of the 1970s, the French “New Criticism” combined many methodological trends: analysis of the internal structure of works, features of poetic speech, narration and plot organization.
Literature
- “New Criticism” is an article from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia .