ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -New Criticism was a formalist movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic object.

Detailed explanation-2: -A formalist critic examines the form of the work as a whole, the form of each individual part of the text (the individual scenes and chapters), the characters, the settings, the tone, the point of view, the diction, and all other elements of the text which join to make it a single text.

Detailed explanation-3: -The New Critics emphasized “close reading” as a way to engage with a text, and paid close attention to the interactions between form and meaning. Important New Critics included Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, John Crowe Ransom, Cleanth Brooks, William Empson, and F.R. Leavis.

Detailed explanation-4: -New Criticism shares several similarities with Formalism. Much like New Criticism, Formalism focused on the text of a work and how the elements within could be used to analyze and determine the meaning, rather than looking at the author or any background information outside of the work.

Detailed explanation-5: -New Criticism, post-World War I school of Anglo-American literary critical theory that insisted on the intrinsic value of a work of art and focused attention on the individual work alone as an independent unit of meaning.