Untitled - Sexey's School Moodle

he outlines in his concept of tradition but “the same quality that Eliot found primarily or
only in minor poetry are now found in the works of the established literary canon”
(Cultural Capital 157). Regardless, New Critical thought was tremendously influential
and penetrated deeply into the institutional core of universities and course syllabi.
Guillory notes that this was probably what simultaneously guaranteed the reaffirmation
of the interconnection between literature, criticism, and pedagogy on the one hand and
the success of the subsequent canonical revision on the other: “[f]or the New Critics, the
reaffirmation of major authors coincided with the moment of their institutional success,
when a practice of interpretation came to define literary pedagogy” (141).
While New Critical approaches to literature focus on a text’s formal properties by
uncovering its “tensions” and “ambiguities” as posed by its “paradoxes,” it appears that
New Criticism in itself is paradoxical. Its overall disregard for contextual interpretations
and its focus on the “work itself” (Brooks, “Formalist” 1367) should theoretically render
the practice of New Criticism pedagogically accessible to everyone, especially those who
do not possess cultural background knowledge, and may let believe that it endeavors to
democratize the instruction of literature. Yet, as Guillory points out, this is clearly not
the case:
…the programmatic attempt to demonstrate the continuity of every
canonical English writer with the metaphysicals on one hand, and
the modern on the other, was the strategic imperative of a more
narrowly institutional campaign, a campaign for hegemony within
the university. (167)
Apart from striving to establish a clear hierarchy within university syllabi, it also
reflected an ideology which echoed that of the higher end cultural discourses:
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