New Criticism

In the years following World War II, New Criticism became a force in Anglo-American literary studies. Its rise was attributed not only to the focus it placed on literature as a discipline unto itself but also to its ease of pedagogical transmission. In an era when universities were flooded with returning soldiers, the New Criticism offered a clear and direct approach to the analysis and appreciation of literature as a rigorous, objective form of study. Several prominent literary critics challenged New Critical methods during its heyday. Alfred Kazin (1915–1998), in the early 1940s, charged that it fetishized formalism. In the latter part of the same decade, R. S. Crane (1886–1967) attacked Brooks and others for their "critical monism," which was exemplified by their slavish adherence to poetry, and primarily lyrical poetry at that. While Brooks responded to this charge by setting his sights on fiction, he was forced to concede that historical context was an important component in the structure of the novel. But it was in the 1960s, with increasing social flux, when New Criticism began to see its influence diminish. Its ahistorical approach to the study of literature was faulted for depoliticizing literature and, thereby, upholding a political status quo. With increased interest paid to Marxist, hermeneutic, structuralist, and feminist criticism in the 1960s, New Criticism ceded ground to a variety of theoretical and historicist concerns. While in the early twenty-first century the New Criticism is faulted for its limitation of focus and methodological austerity, the impact it has had on the rise of a discipline of literary studies in the United States and that discipline's underlying reliance upon various methods of "close" reading are lasting achievements.