西方文学批评理论(英文)

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Ransom "The New Criticism," from which the movement received its name. ● Empson Seven Types of Ambiguity; Some Versions of Pastoral ● Richards‘ Practical Criticism, one of the most "theoretical" works of the New Criticism ● Brooks The Well-Wrought Urn, among the bestknown examples of New Critical poetry explication ● Wimsatt The Verbal Icon
2. The origins of New Criticism
⑴ The name comes from John Crowe Ransom's book The New Criticism (1941), in which he surveyed the theories developed in England by T. S. Eliot, I. A. Richards, and William Empson, together with the work of the American critic Yvor Winters. (2).It developed for rejecting the traditional criticism’s attention to biographical and sociological matters and calls for a more “objective ” criticism focusing on the intrinsic qualities of a work. (3)What it aimed for is a disciplined study of literature with scholarship and critical inquiry as tools for criticism.
NEW CRITICISM
(1930-1960）
Ⅰ.Baቤተ መጻሕፍቲ ባይዱkground
1.Methods previous to New Criticism:
Extrinsic analysis— historical/biographical, moral/philosophical (New Humanist), impressionist critics（印象主义）, expressive school（表现主义）
Ⅱ Theory
1. Definition New Criticism was a dominant trend in English and American literary criticism of the mid twentieth century, from the 1930s to the early 1960s. Its adherents were emphatic in their advocacy of close reading and attention to texts themselves, and their rejection of criticism based on extra-textual sources, especially biography.
2.Key concepts
According to their theory, 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" Meaning exists on the page. (2) The notion of ambiguity is an important concept within New Criticism: a text can display multiple simultaneous meanings. (Empson ：Seven Types of Ambiguity ）
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ⅣCriticism
(1). the New Critics are accused of divorcing literature from its place in history by emphasizing the text as autonomous. “it isolates the work of art from its past and its context.” (2).New Critics tended to value Western work over any other forms of literature, and moreover, placed a higher value on works written by men. Feminist and New Historical Critics have restored many works to the canon that had been ousted by New Critics.
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2.Key concepts
(3) New Critics sought to overcome the traditional distinction between form and content: for them, a poem was ideally an ‘organic unity’ in which tensions(张力） were brought to equilibrium. (4)The New Critics also looked for paradox, ambiguity, irony, and tension to help establish the single best interpretation of the text. (5). Working with patterns of sound, imagery, narrative structure, point of view, and other techniques discernible on close reading of the text, New Critics seek to determine the function and appropriateness of these to the self-contained work.
2.Key concepts
（1）New Critics repudiated ‘extrinsic’ criteria for understanding poems, dismissing them under such names as the Affective Fallacy and the Intentional Fallacy Affective Fallacy: the erroneous practice of interpreting texts according to the psychological or emotional responses of readers, confusing the text with its results. Intentional Fallacy: the erroneous practice of confusing the meaning of a work with the author's purported intention
ⅣCriticism
(3) Preference of certain poets (e.g. T.S. Eliot, the Metaphysical Poets) and certain genres (e.g. poem, short story, but not diary or essay) （4）Another objection to the New Criticism is that it is thought to aim at making criticism scientific, or discovering the correct reading.
Ⅲ New Critical figures
T.S. Eliot "Tradition and the Individual Talent", .” “ poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.”