Notes on David Ayers' "New Criticism and Beyond"
“New Criticism and
Beyond” by David Ayers
New Criticism - Theory that focuses on the analysis
of literature by reading the text of it alone.
This essay is the second chapter of the book Literary Theory: A Reintroduction by
David Ayers published in 1960
·
The Literary Critic
I. A Richards had a background in Philosophy, Aesthetics, Linguistics and
Psychology apart from Literature, so, when he provided a basis for how to study
English, it had a multidisciplinary approach. He had a huge influence on the
development of New Criticism in the US.
·
He is best known
for the idea of ‘Close Reading’ of a text- known as ‘Practical Criticism, which
turned into the backbone of Formalism.
·
But this is only
one among many studies promoted by Richards. Others include:
Principles
of Literary Criticism
Science and
Poetry
o In Science and Poetry there is a remark on Arnold’s saying that
this work will follow the implications of Arnold in promoting poetry as a kind
of secularized substitute for religion.
·
Arnold had claimed
“the future of poetry is immense”in his work The Study of Poetry (1880)
Richards
quotes from The four Ages of Poetry (1820) by Thomas Love Peacock where
Peacock says ‘A poet in our times is a semi- barbarian in a civilised
community’. According to Peacock, the poet lives in the past.
Richards also agrees
with the doubts on Poetry of Peacock because of the very reason that
Poetry arose in a pre-scientific society and has lost its priority.
It is in response to this Richards developed a model of studying literature-
giving importance to: (a) the reading process (b) the category of experience.
The second point, the category of experience – is problematic as it
implies that there is a subjective experience in poetry. But Richards,
referring his knowledge in Psychology places the experience as the basis on
which literary purpose could be achieved. – Why?
Because, the approach advocated by I . A Richards had the risk of
leading into a kind of formalism, giving more importance to the form than any
content of the text. This risk is moderated by the statement that form of the
poetry is connected to the content of the text. Of course, this idea of
Richards is an extension of Ezra Pound and Eliot- Concept of Imagism. (Form
corresponds to the mood and emotion)
·
The experience that
Richards says is not of the scientific experience- Aesthetic experience of Poet
is different from that of Science. Also, the concept of experience includes
both ‘sensory experience’ (poetic sensory experience is more than the immediate
sensory experience) and ‘life experience’. And, art is the communication of
this experience from the author to the reader.
·
Richards also claim
that literature has an adaptive psychological function. According to him, the
artwork is a formal unity which engages the interests of the reader or
spectator by involving ‘as many impulses as possible’. These impulses can
achieve an ordered balance which will help to lead the best possible life. But,
he does not explain this in detail. So, a poem is written in a particular form
to engage the impulses maximum as possible- therefore the form of a poem has
got a function too.
·
Richards coined the
term ‘pseudo-statement’ to tackle the claim that scientific truth has
superseded poetic truth. There are a number of pseudo-statements about God,
universe, human nature. These pseudo-statements helped the world to begin a
life. They are the basis of the culture. For centuries they have been believed.
Science cannot supply the basis for culture so it is important to retain these
pseudo statements though no need to believe it.
Richards’
ideas were modern- to read the text in a scientific way but he failed to arrive
at the objectivity they seek. Richards give importance to ‘value- which is from
Wordsworth- “The arts are our storehouse of recorded values. They spring from
and perpetuate hours in the lives of exceptional people when their control and
command of experience is at its highest”. So the emphasis on experience is from
Romantic era itself. Taking the statement that ‘the healthiest mind is that
capable of securing the greatest amount of value’ connects value to health. So looking
at these statements one can see that Richards was trying to ground reading in
an ethics in which experience is communicated in a holistic way.
(In this
part David Ayers talks about the two narratives of New Criticism)
In 1922, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate and Robert
Penn Warren launched a journal The Fugitive in Nashville, Tennessee- which
formed the nucleus of New Criticism. The strategy of this group was political
when it began but turned in the 1930s- as a strategy for transforming English
Literary Studies in the US.
In England when we look what has happened, this
change in strategy won’t be surprising.
In England, New Criticism was Leavisism- more
cultural than political.
|
Fugitives- New Criticism of US- were more rooted
in Agrarians- their ideal way of life – agrarian life- opposed to the
industrial life. The founders were American Southerners. They had a period in history when many of them
had to fight against slavery. They are basically depending on agriculture |
Leavisism- New Criricism in England- their ideal
way of life- ideal heirarchichal society, Elizabethan England which stand
somewhere between feudalism and modernity- good production, glorious period. They wanted New Criticism in order to repress any
kind of social and political realities. |
USA:
The collection of essays I’ll take my Stand (1930) written by 12 Southerners is important in
this regard. The essays said individualisation is more important than
conformity. Individualisation must be defended in this mechanised world of
industrialisation and dehumanised society.
The title of this books is taken from a famous
song, “Dixie” by Daniel Decatur Emmett, a ‘blackface’ performer. (He founded a band
‘Blackface’ – they were whites but painted their face black and sang songs for
entertaining the audience). In the song, an escaped slave is singing in memory
of the South as if his life in South as a slave was better than the life he is
leading now. (Of Course, many criticised it)
Robert Penn Warren says that this collection of
essays must be called as Tracts Against
Communism because the Agrarians shared the view that Communism is an
extension of capitalism itself. Communists are the Industrialists themselves.
Warren identified the south as the preserver of European principles, analogous
to England. Most of the essays in the collection are against Romanticism. Some
authors even argue to go back to classicism but Donald Davidson argues that
modern artist is also Romantic and he is away from the social realities. This
is because the artist is also a product of industrialisation. What is required
is the art which is integrated with the agricultural community. The agrarians
went beyond these ideas and found New Criticism in USA. Ransom, Tate, Warren
and Donald Davidson were Southerners who were key figures of the movement.
But their ideas against Communism, defence of
slavery, etc. were criticised by the Northerners and were not successful.
Liberals rejected the idea of Agrarians as
conservative, racists and fascists.
This lead to their transformation into an
influential cultural force.
In Britain, Communism was seen as a threat as they
were much advanced in Industrialisation and organisation of labour.
_____________________________________________________________
·
Another important
documents on New Criticism are the essays of John Crowe Ransom collected in The World’s Body (1938) and The New Criticism (1941).
Ransom’s ideas are based on I. A Richards’ Close reading but is
different in some ways.
For Ransom, a poem must not be seen in terms of its subjective affect,
nor in terms of its moral or other content, but as an objective particular.
·
Ransom claims that
science gives us a world through laws, but that poetry can restore the
particulars of nature by using a different mode of language. Thus, establishes
poetry as an alternative form of science.
Poetry can
temporarily or partially reground authentic human being (which is what science
does)
Ransom refers to
this as ‘Ontology’ (Greek word ‘on’ means being and Ontology means Knowledge of
being)
·
According to David
Ayers, Ransom might be influenced by Karl Marx and Walter Benjamin in this
thought.
·
Ransom wanted to
create a space of his own. He wanted to argue for an ontological criticism. In
his work ‘A Psychologist Looks at Poetry’ (1935) Ransom labels Richards as a ‘behaviourist’,
criticising his representation of human mind as a ‘system of interests’ rather
than using the word ‘thought’. According to Ransom, Richards make a mistake by
explaining a poem in terms of its function in the minds of the readers and says
a poem must be considered as an object.
·
This critical
theory is continuously informed by the explanation of mind’s encounter with the
world in terms of two distinct forms of practice: science and poetry.
·
Ransom notes that
Richards’ emphasis on imagination comes from Coleridge’s idea of imagination.
·
Ransom also
identifies the danger of another strand of classical literary criticism which
he calls moralism. For Ransom, one can focus on the moral content of the
literature it discusses, but not the virtues of the literary object or the
moral effect of the things on the others, which is like classical criticism
(Especially Horace who says that poetry should profit (profit=morally benefit))
Theoretically, it was
modernising, but since it concentrated on the text alone, it disconnects it
from the society. Thus it has a resistance to the historical progress.
Ransom acknowledges Richards and praises him for
his contribution to New Criticism. Richards and William Empson are the founding
figures according to Ransom.
Understanding
Poetry (1938) by Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren
had a massive influence on propagation of New Criticism practice. The book was
a teaching anthology. It says:
A satisfactory method of teaching poetry should
embody the following principles:
(a)
Emphasis should be
kept on the poem as a poem.
(b)
The treatment
should be concrete and inductive
(c)
A poem should
always be treated as an organic system of relationships, and the poetic quality
should never be understood as inhering in one or more factors taken in
isolation.
These set of principles laid in the book, agrees
with the more elaborated theories produces by Ransom and Tate. The emphasis on
organic whole comes from the influence of Coleridge.
These set of principles clearly suggests a
criticism which resists theory.
Even if we check the
ideas of Ransom and Richards, the only possible element which is not a textual
criticism is about the communication. Even this concept of communication
(between the author and the reader) can be argues as subjective but does not
hint any political dimension in analysing a poem. So, New Criticism can only be
seen as a theory which is apolitical.
New Criticism had to proceed with caution against
the existing scholars. In universities no one paid any attention to how to
categorise as a work worthy enough to be read during that time. So, the critics
had to give an impression of methodological rigour and of scientific foundation
in order to compete with the scholars for legitimacy. Legitimisation was affected
by three journals: The Kenyon Review, The
Southern Review, The Sewanee Review- These journals sought to set the
standards for criticism and to increase the professionalization of criticism.
Discussions and criticisms of ‘Canon’ was an active
and interesting field of all critics and scholars. The American critic, John
Guillory’s contribution through the work Cultural
Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation (1993) is significant in
this regard.
In Guillory’s terms,
(a)
English education
has proved to be an international form of ‘cultural capital’.
(b)
English has added
status to its students, teachers, educational institutions and nations to which
they all belong.
(c)
Cleanth Brooks’
attitude to canonical poetry in terms of a preference for the difficult
(English) over the popular (American)
But, these things are not discussed in detail by
Guillory.
The rules of Canon formation is different in
England and America.
Guillory’s categorisation of great canonical works
is also unclear as he never mentions things like social class.
Example: If we take D.H Lawrence, more than whether
he is white or European, the categorisation does not give information that the
writer is from working class. Such kind of important classifications are
ignored by Guillory.
English has a low theoretical profile in U.S
especially when it tried to make a list of canonical works- This politics
always existed.
It was new criticism which tried to make possible
the extrapolation of English literature to the American context.
William.C.Spengemann, Professor of Arts at
Dartmouth College, Hampshire, England in his work “What is American
Literature?” explains:
·
On the one hand, a
selection of American literature was being made based on quality- that is on
the basis of New Critical Criteria which preferred symbolic and self-reflexive
works.
·
On the other hand,
this selection process made something called ‘American Literature’ teachable
and interesting.
·
The author
criticised the idea of projecting American Literature as inhabiting an entirely
different realm than that of British literature.
o He points out that both, American and British Literature have close
interrelationships.
What happened to New Criticism? Did it end?
Frank Lentricchia, American literary critic,
novelist and film teacher in After the
New Criticism (1980) discusses the impact on our critical thought of
thinkers like Frye, Stevens, Kermode, Foucault, Derrida among many other
central figures.
The book dates the end of New Criticism to the
publication of Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of
Criticism (1957).He substitutes the psychoanalytic model of influence
preferred by Harold Bloom.
Frye’s myth criticism was temporarily but widely
adopted among many critics in U.S
From one side, it was a professionalization of
discipline of literary studies (New structured form of analysing literature)
From another, a peculiar transitional stage between
New Criticism and the arrival of structuralism.
Frye’s criticism is Archetypal Literary Criticism,
which analyses the text by focusing on recurring myths and archetypes in narrative,
symbols, images and character types.
Difference between Frye and Ransom
|
Ransom |
Frye |
|
While science discovered regularities, literature
revealed peculiarities |
The whole of literature should be treated as a
rule governing object |
|
Poetry conveyed the subtlety of experience
through departments from rhetorical norms. |
Experience is no more a matter for criticism |
|
Endorsed the Kantian notion of autonomy of the
artwork |
Criticism too is autonomous and this is
constituted both by its absolute relationship to literature. |
|
Focused on quasi- scientific rigorous criticism
aimed at assessing merits and demerits of individual literary objects. |
Art like nature has to be distinguished from the
systematic study of it, which is criticism |
|
|
|
Frye and New Criticism:
·
Frye’s work can be
seen as an extension of New criticism.
·
Difference: New
Criticism saw a work as a unit, Frye saw the whole of literature as a colossal
single work.
- Frye criticises New Critics making them out to be elitists whose
selection of preferred literary works and making of the same has parallels with
social hierarchy.
- Frye proposes ‘ethical criticism’.
(a)
Ethical criticism
deals with art as a communication from the past to the present, and is based on
the conception of total and simultaneous possession of past culture.
(b)
This is designed to
express contemporary impact of all art without selecting a tradition
(a)
Frye is against
judging literature
v Frye’s approach was new and more scientific than the approach of
Richards and Ransom.
v Frye’s idea of connecting with the past can be seen in Eliot’s concept
of tradition where Eliot says all the then present literary works are a
continuation and influence of all the previous works. Eliot does not say
anything like progress in arts instead he emphasizes on history and tradition.
v When Frye categorized works historically based on the archetypal
criticism, he could not explain how it will progress or how the progress could
be analyzed through the categorization. Some works were primitive, Some were categorized as developed but no order in classification was being done by Frye.
v Though Frye uses Myth in his criticism, he rejects Jung (who is an
anthropologist who studied about the collective unconscious which is connected
to the study of myth) because his emphasis on literature as an autonomous
system does not permit any causal connection between the unconscious and the
literary work.
v Despite these and other defects in Frye’s criticism, it was accepted by
the universities as it was a new kind of criticism which was systematic.
v Frye also anticipates many aspects of French structuralism with its
roots in linguistics and its example in anthropology, which began influence in
America from 1966.
____________________________________________________________________
He concludes the essay by explaining about African
American Literature.
In African American Literature, no one will be able
to categorize and analyze the literary works based on the rules set by Ransom,
Richards or Frye.
Most of the works were not written. Most of them
were transmitted orally at first.
Ralph Ellison is one author who is significant in
the formation of the African American Literary Theory.
A key theme of his novel. The Invisible Man is the
construction of identity from available discourses – literary, political,
folkloric and vernacular.
Jazz Music was taken as a metaphor and symbol for
African American existence
Thus Ellison, whose ideas were different from that
of the New Critics paved the way for the other African American writers who
wrote after Ellison.
While Frye elaborated his discovery that all
literature was part of one great system, Ellison’s agenda was an agenda
concerning textuality, force and identity; canon and race or ethnicity; and the
institutional organization of culture.
The author concludes with the point that when new
criticism and other criticism claimed they were more scientific and tried to categorize different works, they neglected or unconsciously forgot that all the
rules and methods will not be applicable to other marginalized literature
written in English.
____________________________________________
Philo- Lit
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