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Proceedings of National Seminar on Postmodern Literary Theory and Literature , Jan. 27-28, 2012, Nanded FINDING ECHOES IN LITERARY WORK --Dr Shailaja B. Wadikar School of Lang., Lit. &Cul. Studies S. R. T. Marathwada University, Nanded The dissatisfaction of the younger generation of poets and critics with biohistorical and subjective literary criticism and the growth of Formalism brought about two important developments on both the sides of the Atlantic. I. A. Richard’s Principles of Literary Criticism,Science and Poetry, and Practical Criticism; William Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity, the critical essays of T.S. Eliot, and the essays of F. R. Leavis in his journal Scrutiny ... established Practical Criticism as a theory and method of literary criticism from the 1930s to the 1970s. 1 John Crowe Ransom’s book titled The New Criticism published in 1941, gave currency to the term ‘New Criticism’ in America and Europe. So, Practical Criticism is a British term that emphasizes the analysis and interpretation of literature without the reference to any context or author, which is later on termed as New Criticism in America. Like practical criticism, new criticism also stresses the decontextualized objective reading of the text. In the new critic’s view, literary criticism has nothing to do with social context or literary background of the work or the effects of the work on its readers. It is concerned with the work itself. The work has become the text now. So, the text is allimportant for the critic. New criticism, therefore, relies on the close study of the text as implicit in I.A. Richards’s, Ezra Pound’s, and T. S. Eliot’s ‘Objective Criticism’. Cleanth Brooks and R. P. Warren collaborated in producing such textbooks of practical criticism as: Understanding Poetry (1938), Understanding Fiction (1943), and Understanding Drama (1945). The other critics, writing in this mode, are Allen Tate, R. P. Blackmur, William K. Wimsatt, F.R. Leavis, Rene Wellek and Austen Warren. The tenets of the new criticism, in brief, are as follows: • A poem is an object of study in itself. • It is independent, autonomous, and self-sufficient. • The art of poetry is not teleological,i.e. has no practical purpose/ use. • In the new criticism, there is no reference to the biography of the author or his social conditions or his ideology. It is because of its critical focus on the literary work in isolation far from the circumstances under which it is written and the effects it produces on its readers, the new criticism may be seen as a type of formalism. • What is of prime importance to the new critic is his explication or close reading of the text. • The most important feature of the new criticism is that it is basically verbal. It views literary language as a special kind of language, as it is different from the scientific language and the everyday language. The emphasis is on the overall “structure” of the poem and its “organic unity”. The two can never be separated: the verbal structure i.e. the form and the meaning i.e. the content of the poem. A poem is, therefore, something unparaphrasable, although it looks paraphrasable. So, Cleanth Brooks calls this semantic phenomenon “the heresy of paraphrase.” • The new criticism does not seem to distinguish between literary genres. • In the view of a new critic, there exist ‘tension’, ‘irony’ and ‘paradox’ in a poem. A poem represents “reconciliation of diverse impulses or juxtaposition of heterogeneous and opposite forces.” The work has a form which consists essentially in its structure or pattern of meanings. It is characterised by completeness, integrity, and unity. The best examples of the theory and practice of new criticism are found in Cleanth 82 PLTL-2012: ISBN 978-81-920120-0-1
Proceedings of National Seminar on Postmodern Literary Theory and Literature , Jan. 27-28, 2012, Nanded Brooks’s The Well Wrought Urn (1947), W. K. Wimsatt’s The Verbal Icon (1954), Rene Wellek’s and Austin Warren’s Theory of Literature (1973), Rene Wellek’s A History of Modern Criticism in six volumes (1986). New Criticism: Background The nature and scope of new criticism can be understood by taking into consideration the brief outline of the development of the English critical tradition. It is observed that foundation of the Western literary criticism lies in the writings of classical critics like Aristotle, Horace, and Longinus. Aristotle’s Poetics is considered the greatest treatise in the field of drama, poetry, and criticism. Aristotle wrote it with two intentions: (a) for giving principles as guidelines for the construction of a play; (b) for his own understanding and appreciation of existing Greek plays. In that sense, Poetics is partly ‘theoretical’ and partly ‘applied’. Similarly, Horace’s Ars Poetica is also pragmatic in its aim. In it, there are ‘rules’ for the apprentice dramatists and poets which Horace lays down as a series of ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’. Still, it is not considered theoretical in its orientation. ‘On the Sublime’ by Longinus is actually a magnificent piece of applied or practical criticism which later on came to be regarded as the old version of the new criticism. Here the pieces of Greek poetry and drama are examined on the basis of diction, imagery, verse movement, and tone. The readers’ attention is kept centred on the stylistic features of the chosen passage. The analysis of the sublime -- be it imagery, metaphor, or any such rhetorical figure-- anticipates the modern critic’s close analysis of poems. The sublime, according to Longinus, lies in excellence and distinction of expression from the common one. Here, he seems to demand, like the stylistic critics, deviations from the norms of regular grammar and usage. Similarly, he appears to think that poetical devices are valued only in terms of their function in a work. 2 The fundamental questions in literary criticism are: (a) What is the nature of a literary representation? (2) What is its function? Literary criticism enables us to examine thoroughly the structure/form of a work of art in terms of its constituent parts so that it will be totally an objective interpretation. Aristotle anticipates the same in his analysis of tragedy. Following the historical approach, we see that the major critics in English literary criticism are Sidney, Dryden, Dr. Johnson, Coleridge, Arnold, Eliot, and Leavis. In the evaluation of a work of art, the poet or the writer is placed in his times and attention is given to the state of the English language at the time of his/ her writing. Notable examples are found in Sidney’s examination of Spenser, Dryden’s and Arnold’s estimates of Chaucer, and Dr. Johnson’s criticism of Shakespeare. Another major trend in English literary criticism is bio-literary approach. Here, the personality of the poet is taken into consideration and his/her achievements are related to his intellectual development and character. Famous example of it is Dr. Johnson’s Lives of the Poets (1779-81). T. S. Eliot, a classicist, is obviously a great opponent of romanticism. In “Tradition and Individual Talent” he states, “…the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions which are its material.” 3 Coleridge’s comments in his lectures on Shakespeare and his scrutiny of Wordsworth’s poetic theory and practice in Biographia Literaria (1817) the chapters XIX, XX, and XXII of the book are the best examples of applied criticism. While commenting on Wordsworth’s unique use of the English language, he reveals Wordworth’s mastery of the language, particularly in the use of different stylistic features. Too much emphasis on the biographical criticism in the late Victorian period (e. g. Matthew Arnolds critical estimates of the English poets from Chaucer onwards) led to the emergence of ‘practical criticism’ in the 20th century. This movement “opposed itself against the prevailing interest of the scholars and the critics of that era with the biographies of authors, the social context of literature and literary history by insisting 83 PLTL-2012: ISBN 978-81-920120-0-1
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