Meaning of New Criticism | Babel Free

Definitions

A movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle of the 20th century, emphasizing close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work functions as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic object.

Equivalents

Examples

“It is not just these works that are to be explicated as texts, it is the workings of a political and literary culture that can strengthen the present⟳. For this point⟳ of view⟳, Matthiessen was attacked. In the heyday of formalist New Criticism, itself a way of going about the study⟳ of literature that could only serve⟳ the interests of depoliticizing public culture, any wider interests in the interrelation of the work⟳ to society and times and the most fundamental provisions of the history of ideas are all to be expunged.”

“One could argue⟳ that it is precisely this lack of self-awareness or self-reflexivity that so easily renders environmentalists the butt of jokes, that makes them "vulnerable," to use⟳ that language of New Criticism.”

CEFR level