Approaches of New Criticism Essay Example for Free

Approaches of New Criticism stressA literary movement that started in the late 1920s and 1930s and originated in reaction to tralatitious criticism that new critics saw as largely concerned with matters extraneous to the text, e.g., with the biography or mental science of the author or the works relationship to literary history. New Criticism proposed that a work of literary art should be regarded as autonomous, and so should non be judged by reference to considerations beyond itself. A song consists less of a series of referential and verifiable statements closely the real world beyond it, than of the presentation and sophisticated organization of a set of complex experiences in a verbal var. (Hawkes, pp. 150-151). Major figures of New Criticism let in I. A. Richards, T. S. Eliot, Cleanth Brooks, David Daiches, William Empson, Murray Krieger, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, F. R. Leavis, Robert Penn Warren, W. K. Wimsatt, R. P. Blackmur, Rene Wellek, Ausin Warren, and Ivo r Winters.Archetypal/Myth CriticismA plaster cast of criticism based largely on the works of C. G. Jung (YOONG) and Joseph Campbell (and myth itself). Some of the schools major figures let in Robert Graves, Francis Fergusson, Philip Wheelwright, Leslie Fiedler, Northrop Frye, Maud Bodkin, and G. Wilson Knight. These critics overhear the genres and individual plot patterns of literary works, including highly sophisticated and realistic works, as recurrences of certain archetypes and essential mythic formulae. Archetypes, check to Jung, be primordial images the psychic residue of repeated types of experience in the lives of very ancient ancestors which are inherited in the collective unconscious of the human race and are expressed in myths, religion, dreams, and cliquish fantasies, as well as in the works of literature (Abrams, p. 10, 112). Some common examples of archetypes include water, sun, moon, colors, circles, the bulky Mother, Wise Old valet, etc. In terms of archetypa l criticism, the color white might be associated with innocence or could signify death or the supernatural.Psychoanalytic CriticismThe application of specific mental principles (particularly those of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan zhawk lawk-KAWN) to the study of literature. Psychoanalytic criticism may focus on the writers psyche, the study of the creative process, the study of psychological types and principles present in spite of appearance works of literature, or the effects of literature upon its readers (Wellek and Warren, p. 81). In addition to Freud and Lacan, major figures include Shoshona Felman, Jane Gallop, Norman Holland, George Klein, Elizabeth Wright, Frederick Hoffman, and, Simon Lesser.MarxismA sociological approach to literature that viewed works of literature or art as the products of historical forces that can be analyzed by looking at the material conditions in which they were formed. In Marxist ideology, what we often classify as a world view (such as the Vi ctorian age) is in truth the articulations of the dominant class. Marxism generally focuses on the clash between the dominant and repressed classes in any tending(p) age and also may encourage art to imitate what is often termed an objective reality.Contemporary Marxism is much broader in its focus, and views art as simultaneously reflective and autonomous to the age in which it was produced. The Frankfurt give instruction is also associated with Marxism (Abrams, p. 178, Childers and Hentzi, pp. 175-179). Major figures include Karl Marx, Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jameson, Raymond Williams, Louis Althusser (ALT-whos-sair), Walter Benjamin (ben-yeh-MEEN), Antonio Gramsci (GRAWM-shee), Georg Lukacs (lou-KOTCH), and Friedrich Engels, Theordor Adorno (a-DOR-no), Edward Ahern, Gilles Deleuze (DAY-looz) and Felix Guattari (GUAT-eh-reePostcolonialismLiterally, postcolonialism refers to the period following the decline of colonialism, e.g., the end or lessening of domination by European emp ires. Although the term postcolonialism generally refers to the period after colonialism, the distinction is not always made. In its use as a sarcastic approach, postcolonialism refers to a collection of theoretical and critical strategies used to examine the culture (literature, politics, history, and so forth) of former colonies of the European empires, and their relation to the rest of the world (Makaryk clv see General Resources below). Among the many challenges facing postcolonial writers are the attempt both to resurrect their culture and to fleck preconceptions about their culture. Edward say, for example, uses the word Orientalism to describe the discourse about the East constructed by the West. Major figures include Edward Said (sah-EED), Homi Bhabha (bah-bah), Frantz Fanon (fah-NAWN), Gayatri Spivak, Chinua Achebe (ah-CHAY-bay) , Wole Soyinka, Salman Rushdie, Jamaica Kincaid, and Buchi EmechetaExistentialismExistentialism is a philosophy (promoted especially by Jean-P aul Sartre and Albert Camus) that views each person as an disjunct being who is cast into an alien universe, and conceives the world as possessing no inherent human truth, value, or meaning. A persons life, then, as it moves from the nothingness from which it came toward the nothingness where it must end, defines an existence which is both anguished and absurd (Guerin). In a world without sense, all choices are possible, a situation which Sartre viewed as human beings central dilemma human woman is condemned to be free. In contrast to atheist existentialism, Sren Kierkegaard theorized that belief in God (given that we are provided with no proof or assurance) required a conscious choice or leap of faith. The major figures include Sren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre (sart or SAR-treh), Albert Camus (kah-MUE or ka-MOO) , Simone de Beauvoir (bohv-WAHR) , Martin Buber, Karl Jaspers (YASS-pers), and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (mer-LOH pawn-TEE).Structura lismStructuralismStructuralism is a way of thinking about the world which is predominantly concerned with the perceptions and description of structures. At its simplest, structural anthropology claims that the nature of every element in any given situation has no significance by itself, and in fact is determined by all the other elements involved in that situation. The full significance of any entity cannot be perceived unless and until it is corporate into the structure of which it forms a part (Hawkes, p. 11). Structuralists believe that all human activity is constructed, not natural or essential. Consequently, it is the systems of organization that are important (what we do is always a matter of selection within a given construct). By this formulation, any activity, from the actions of a narrative to not eating ones peas with a knife, takes place within a system of differences and has meaning only in its relation to other possible activities within that system, not to some mean ing that emanates from nature or the divine (Childers Hentzi, p. 286.). Major figures include Claude Lvi-Strauss (LAY-vee-strows), A. J. Greimas (GREE-mahs), Jonathan Culler, Roland Barthes (bart), Ferdinand de Saussure (soh-SURR or soh-ZHOR), Roman Jakobson (YAH-keb-sen), Vladimir Propp, and Terence Hawkes.Post-Structuralism and DeconstructionPost-Structuralism (which is often used synonymously with Deconstruction or Postmodernism) is a reaction to structuralism and works against seeing language as a stable, closed system. It is a shift from seeing the poem or novel as a closed entity, equipped with definite meanings which it is the critics task to decipher, to seeing literature as irreducibly plural, an endless play of signifiers which can never be finally nailed down to a bingle center, essence, or meaning (Eagleton 120 see reference below under General References). Jacques Derridas (dair-ree-DAH) paper on Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences (deliv ered in 1966) proved particularly influential in the earth of post-structuralism. Derrida argued against, in essence, the notion of a knowable center (the Western ideal of logocentrism), a structure that could cabal the differential play of language or thought but somehow remain immune to the alike play it depicts (Abrams, 258-9).Derridas critique of structuralism also heralded the advent of deconstruction thatlike post-structuralismcritiques the notion of origin create into structuralism. In negative terms, deconstructionparticularly as articulated by Derridahas often come to be interpreted as anything goes since nothing has any real meaning or truth. More positively, it may posited that Derrida, like Paul de Man (de-MAHN) and other post-structuralists, really asks for rigor, that is, a type of interpretation that is constantly and ruthlessly self-conscious and on guard. Similarly, Christopher Norris (in Whats scathe with Postmodernism?) launches a cogent argument against simp listic attacks of Derridas theories