Talk:New Criticism

Untitled
I don't know a lot about this, but this reads as biased against this style from w hat I see. Please correcT(and remove flag) if I am wrong.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.72.82.57 (talk) 05:39, 21 February 2007 (UTC).
 * actually, the article is quite sound. removed flag. --Janneman 13:39, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. The assumption that New Criticism is politically conservative smacks of dull bias. In my edit, I left this view in as representative of one stance (a simplistic one) but added some reasons why New Criticism is also politically radical (the Southern Agrarians, poststructuralism, etc.). What gets lost in all this, of course, if the act of close reading itself, which gets short shrift in this article. Unfortunately, I don't have time to correct. But, obviously, the most objective approach to the topic would be to simply describe close reading.

Support statement, please
From the introductory paragraph:


 * At their best, New Critical readings were brilliant, articulately argued, and broad in scope, but sometimes they were idiosyncratic and moralistic.

The article never really returns to this point. Could we have something to back this assertion up?

Anville 16:49, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

True, I think it is an important point and should be explicated.

Could someone address this please? Addirow 21:13, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

This statement, from Key Concepts paragraph four, also needs to be supported, reworded, or removed:


 * Both schools of thought might be said to anticipate the 21st century interest in electronic artificial intelligence, and perhaps lead researchers in that field to underestimate the difficulty of that undertaking.

Anila Wafer 00:09, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Criticism of New Criticism Link
The page from the link "Criticism of New Criticism" is, I think, really not up to the standards of a reputable source. Essentially, it seems to be just some random guys opinion. There are scores upon scores of criticisms of New Criticism better than this, and I would very much suggest replacing the link with something, anything, else. Corbmobile 01:37, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly agree. The Johns Hopkins link gives a pretty balanced view of the topic, but if we want a second, more contrary link, there are probably better ones than this. Thomas1617 19:24, 4 March 2007 (UTC) Thomas1617
 * agreed & removed. --Janneman 13:42, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Works chronology might be changed
To me it seems the Ransom article should be moved to the top of the Works list, to orient the reader chronologically. I know Eliot and Richards really kicked the 'movement' off, but from what I understand it was Ransom's essay that gave the nomer. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Moses sheperd (talk • contribs) 09:26, 11 March 2007 (UTC).

Also, dates should be given for all these works (?)

John Hopkins Link
It seems that whenever I try to get to the John Hopkins link, I need a username and password. Is it possible to get a link that doesn't need one? 71.166.43.227 12:30, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually, you cannot. You need first to create a Wikipedia account and chose a password of your own to continue.

Thanks. Rodolphe HOUGANGOYE NGOUAMBILA (talk) 12:49, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Bad Link That Requires $80 Subscription
I deleted the following link because it's subscription-only and the subscription costs $80.


 * New Criticism from the Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory

Someone immediately reverted my deletion claiming that it's still a useful link. It was my understanding that WP articles aren't supposed to link to subscription-only destinations. This seems to be a heavily monitored entry and I don't want to get into a flame war, but just putting it out there that that is not in fact a useful link and someone should find something that's actually useful. Even a mirror site with that info would be OK from my perspective. Aroundthewayboy 20:53, 9 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, it's too bad that access to that site costs money. If another reference article of the same or better quality were available for free, I'd be all for substituting it.  As it is, many educational institutions will have paid for access to the Johns Hopkins Guide site, and since the audience for this article is probably largely students, it seems reasonable to keep it.  If you have more useful links on the subject, please add them.  -- Rbellin|Talk 21:22, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I did a little more searching and turned up a free link to the same article here. I'll add this to the article. -- Rbellin|Talk 21:49, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I completely disagree that most users would be students. I believe the WP policy is not to include subscriber-only links.Aroundthewayboy 15:17, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

I refer you to [].

Unless you have an argument much better than what you have proposed so far, you are in violation of Wikipedia policy. I am deleting that subscription-only link and appreciate the fact that you found a non subsciption link. Aroundthewayboy 15:21, 11 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Please note that the policy on external links explicitly exempts article references (and see also recent discussion of this policy. I think you're being a bit hasty with the accusation of policy violation, since this essentially amounts to deleting a reference from the article because it's not freely available on the web. And retaining a link to the official published version of the reference seems quite harmless to me.  Still, I don't care enough about this to revert your deletion. -- Rbellin|Talk 15:31, 11 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Hm, I think you're right, actually. That is a very poorly worded policy, hence my and other people misreading it. Aroundthewayboy 23:29, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

A sentence question
Is the following sentence a typo or am I misreading it?

"The Southern Agrarians, for instance, enfolded New Criticism's emphasis on irony into their anti-authoritarianism and criticism of the emerging culture of spending, consumption, and progress but — in the view of such writers as Robert Penn Warren — authoritarian populism early in the 20th century." Katalogon (talk) 14:53, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I think this sentence is missing some words: "Literature was approached and literary scholarship did not focus on analysis of texts." Philgoetz (talk) 19:02, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

What?
"The basic orientation and modes of analysis in the New Criticism were adapted to the contextual criticism of Eliseo Visas and Marry Kriger." Who are these people of whom Google and I have never heard? Does their existence have a citation? Because I suspect they don't exist, and should be deleted. (Someone please correct me if I'm mistaken). —Preceding unsigned comment added by MatthewLiberal (talk • contribs) 04:54, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Probably a vandal added their own name in the place of the real ones. Wrad (talk) 05:08, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Definitions of Words
I note that, while New Criticism may reject the role of authorial intent and reader interpretation in determining the meaning of a text, it does not reject the definitions of words, and those definitions are external to the text.

So how does a New Critic decide what's "external" and what's "internal"?LogicalDash (talk) 11:21, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Very carefully! (I couldn't resist.)

Seriously, New Critics define that boundary differently. I went to school during the hay day of New Criticism and one of my professors was an advocate of I. A. Richards and Charles Ogden. When we were asked to criticize some text, we were allowed to cite any external source. However, we had to justify our chosen sources with only three exceptions: the professor's text book, the dictionary and the religious canon of our choice. One could argue that these three sources would allow a lot of "external" text to creep in without thinking. However, to write a substantial essay you needed to wander outside of these three and then you had to think about why you were choosing those "external" sources.

My point is that boundaries in general, and this one in particular, are fuzzy and the New Critic should explain his criteria for including anything which could be considered external by a reasonable reader. Without the explanation, that interpretation is left as an exercise for the reader. John Harvey (talk) 14:38, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Citation Error?
What exactly does Franklin (2001), 119-120 refer to? there's no information beyond that, no title, etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.75.99.136 (talk) 08:44, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Wellek
As an architect of the New Criticism, Wellek would be bound to defend it in 1978, when it was giving way to structuralism, especially in the pages of the New Criterion, a magazine not well known for objectivity.

I think there could be more recent sources given for a description of responses to New Critics -- Gerald Graff, springs to mind as a reliable source. This article does not jibe with what I have read about the topic. Mballen (talk) 07:06, 29 November 2013 (UTC) Mballen (talk) 21:14, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

Text appears to be copied from another source
The first paragraph of the "Formalism Theory" section seems to be copied directly from the following source: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/introliterature/chapter/new-criticism-suggested-replacement/


 * The preceding comment was added at 15:51 on 29 April 2021‎ by Slumlord69
 * It seems more likely that the entire lumenlearning.com page was copied from the Wikipedia article. The paragraphs in the lumenlearning.com page are duplicates or near-duplicates of Wikipedia paragraphs, but the  paragraphs were added to the Wikipedia article at different times between 2007 and 2014 by different Wikipedia editors.  It seems unlikely that those editors all found their way to the lumenlearning.com page over the years and copied the lumenlearning.com paragraphs one-by-one into the Wikipedia article.  It is more likely that lumenlearning.com copied the paragraphs in one fell swoop from the Wikipedia article.


 * align="center" style="border-style: none none solid solid; background: #e3e3e3"|lumenlearning paragraph
 * align="center" style="border-style: none none solid solid; background: #e3e3e3"|Wikipedia paragraph(s)
 * align="center" style="border-style: none none solid solid; background: #e3e3e3"|Initial text of paragraph
 * align="center" style="border-style: none none solid solid; background: #e3e3e3"|Added to Wikipedia article
 * 1
 * 1&2
 * New Criticism was a formalist movement...
 * by mballen at 02:26 2 Dec 2013
 * 2
 * 3
 * New Criticism developed as a reaction...
 * by 67.216.144.250 at 02:23 9 Oct 2014
 * 3
 * 5
 * New Critics believed the structure and meaning of the text...
 * by mballen at 09:43, 29 Nov 2013
 * 4
 * 10
 * The hey-day of the New Criticism...
 * by mballen at 09:43, 29 Nov 2013
 * 5
 * 11
 * Studying a passage of prose or poetry in New Critical style...
 * by Bebocka at 04:51, 12 November 2007
 * 6
 * 12
 * Although the New Criticism is no longer a dominant theoretical model...
 * by jpcohen at 21:04, 9 May 2011
 * Studying a passage of prose or poetry in New Critical style...
 * by Bebocka at 04:51, 12 November 2007
 * 6
 * 12
 * Although the New Criticism is no longer a dominant theoretical model...
 * by jpcohen at 21:04, 9 May 2011
 * by jpcohen at 21:04, 9 May 2011

Dieter.Meinertzhagen (talk) 00:48, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

events led to the emergence of New Criticism?
I need a answer 180.235.121.242 (talk) 05:26, 8 August 2022 (UTC)