formalism
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Formalist Approaches
Formalist ApproachesBroadly: concerned exclusively with the
text in isolation from the world, author, or reader
Specifically: Russian Formalism focused on
literariness of texts, defamiliarization, material & device, story & plot, narrative voice
New Criticism focused on the text as an object that can be analyzed independent of author, world, or reader
New Criticism: The Quest for “Text-centricity”
• formalist school from 1920 – 1960• methodology applied to yield single, correct
“hidden meaning” of literary texts• “close readings” focused on literary devices
• looked at language-denotation, connotation, form, figures, import, structure.
• valued complexity, oppositions, irony, paradox
• emphasized objectivity in literary criticism• looks to language denotation, connotation, form,
figures, structure• asks for educated audience/“willing students”
Precursors
• Aristotle focused on elements w/ which a work is composed.
• Romantics stressed organic unity from imagination’s “esemplastic” power.
• Poe extolled the “singleness of effect” in poetry & fiction.
• James made the same case for fiction as “organic form.”
Other Names
• Aesthetic criticism • Textual criticism• Ontological criticism• Modernism• Formalism • Practical criticism
Practitioners of New Criticism
British: I. A. Richards,William Empson,
F.R. Leavis
American: W.K. Wimsatt, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, Richard Blackmur,
Cleanth Brooks, John Crowe Ransom
Origins in early 1900s
“honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry” (Eliot, Selected Essays 17).
Strove for scientific objectivity but of a special nature because words enable multiple perspectives.
Major Texts of New Criticism
I.A. Richards The Principles of Literary Criticism, Practical Criticism (1920s)The Fugitives & Southern Agrarians formed
John Crowe Ransom’s The New Criticism (1941): poems as a concrete entity like any other art object
Cleanth Brooks’ The Well Wrought Urn (1947):
Central Argument
The poem is the raison d’etre.• to place poet or culture above the
literary expression is to move away from essential unity of poem.
• employing biography, history or affect is an inherently vague and unreliable basis for analysis.
• objective analysis is far more inclusive and forgiving methodology.
“The Heresy of Paraphrase”Cleanth Brooks, 1947
• from The Well Wrought Urn--treatment of ten poems spanning historical /canonical record from Shakespeare to Yeats.
• employs “close-reading” techniques to see “what the masterpieces had in common” (1354)
• Poems chosen for Brooks• added metaphysical (Donne) and
modern (Yeats)
William K. Wimsatt, Jr. Monroe C. Beardsley (1907-75) (1915-85)
• Born-Washington, D.C.
• Georgetown, Ph.D. Yale
• Taught @ Yale-1939• Known for works on
Samuel Johnson• Literary Criticism:
• The Verbal Icon• w/Cleanth Brooks• The Intentional
Fallacy• The Affective
Fallacy
• Born-Connecticut• Ph.D. Yale, briefly in
Philosophy dept.• Mt. Holyoke, 1944• Taught literary
criticism Swarthmore and Temple
• Aesthetics and Philosophy
• Joint w/ Wimsatt• The Intentional
Fallacy• The Affective
Fallacy
What is “Paraphrase”?
The attempt to evaluate a poem by presenting a proposition about the poem’s meaning apart from its form; i.e. giving a “prose-sense” to the poem.
Central Argument• Structure : whole is greater than
sum of parts• Rational meaning and Emotive
meaning• Import• Suggestion
• Reduction of “meaning” • lowest common denominator
• “all such formulations lead away from the center of the poem—not toward it…”
• Paraphrase strips poem of poetic power• “form and content, or content and
medium, are inseparable.”(1357)
• Longinus—remark on Euripides (154) *
Problems inherent…
Two other theoretical errors…
• “Intentionalism”-• “Affectionionalism”- *
The Intentional Fallacy• Published 1946• Objective literary criticism
defended• Criticism hampered by use of
biography or “genealogy” to evaluate the effectiveness of poetry
• Intentionalists tend to move away from the poem
What is the Intentional Fallacy?
• A confusion between the poem and its origins (genealogy-Genetic Fallacy)• Starts with the “causes” and ends in
“biography and relativism” (1388)
• Intention: “design or plan in author's mind” (1375)
• “Intention” not stable standard of literary criticism:• unavailable• undesirable
Unavailable Intention
• Work is “detached from the author at birth” (1376)
• Echoes Jean-Paul Sartre• Unduly extends the author’s creative
freedom.
• Completed work belongs to the public and to their interpretations and evaluations
• Child/Parent Analogy *
Undesirable Intention• Work measured against something
“outside of the author” (1381)
• “author psychology” (1381).
• Attractive from an historical or biographical perspective
• W & B warn against confusing “personal and poetic studies”
• “Critical inquiries are not settled by consulting the oracle”(1387)
• Settling a bet: Eliot
• Criticism must depend on recognition of difference• Internal vs. external sources of evidence of
meaning
Internal vs. External Evidence• Internal evidence of meaning
discovered through “the semantics and syntax of a poem, through grammars, dictionaries, and all the literature which is the source of dictionaries, [and] in general through all that makes a language and culture” (1381)
• External evidence of meaning consists of “revelations about how or why the poet wrote the poem” (1381)
• One moves toward poem, one moves away
Essence of Objective Critical Literary Analysis
Successful works contain all necessary and relevant information to find meaning• Example: Derek Walcott's “Ruins of a
Great House”
“The Affective Fallacy”
• Published in 1949• Companion article to “The Intentional
Fallacy”• Recount history and results of
psychological, emotion-driven conception of literary analysis
• Focus on role and function of critic• Critic is teacher or explicator of meaning• Arnoldian “personal fallacy”
What is the Affective Fallacy?
Confusing the POEM with its RESULTS
i.e. what a poem is with what a poem does
But what does that mean?How does that represent a fallacy?
*
Affective Critics:Shifting the Focus
• Critics engaged in Affective Theory will• use emotional response as evaluative
standard• subjugate poem to subjective emotional
response,• Critic/reader the actual object of cognitive
focus.
• differentiate cognitive effects and emotive affects
• In accounting for affect, reader must re-engage text
• E.g. Donne’s “The Canonization”*
SummaryThe poem is the raison d’etre.
• To place poet or culture above literary expression is to move away from essential unity of poem.
• Employing biography, history or affect is an inherently vague and unreliable basis for analysis.
• Objective analysis is far more inclusive and forgiving methodology.