New Criticism

New Criticism is a literary theory that emerged in the first half of the 20th century, particularly in the United States, and evaluates literary works within their own autonomous structure. This approach sets aside external factors such as historical context, the author’s biography, or reader responses, treating the text as a closed and unified whole.

At the center of this theory lies the "close reading" method; it argues that the linguistic, formal, and aesthetic elements of a text must be examined in detail. The concept of “intentional fallacy,” developed by William K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley, demonstrates that referring to the author’s intention is invalid for literary criticism; meanwhile, Cleanth Brooks’s emphasis on the “heresy of paraphrase” asserts that the meaning of a literary work cannot be summarized in other words because form and content constitute an inseparable whole.

In this regard, New Criticism established literature as an independent discipline within academia, but it was criticized from the 1960s onward for excluding historical and social context.

History

The intellectual background of New Criticism was shaped by modernist assertions that poetry possesses “a life of its own” and cannot be equated with biographical data (T. S. Eliot), as well as by I. A. Richards’s experimental reading practices at Cambridge, where he provided students with “neutral” texts stripped of authorial and historical knowledge. These initiatives became precursors to a critical language oriented toward understanding the text independently of external influences, through its internal structure. Subsequently, this line of thought grounded the principle of focusing on “the text itself” in theoretical foundations.

From the late 1930s to the 1950s, New Criticism profoundly transformed university-based literary practice in the United States. The movement, centered around figures such as John Crowe Ransom, Cleanth Brooks, Robert Penn Warren, Allen Tate, and W. K. Wimsatt, redefined both critical methodology and classroom pedagogy through journals (e.g., The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, Sewanee Review) and textbooks (Understanding Poetry, Understanding Fiction). Ransom’s essay “Criticism, Inc.” (1938) and his book The New Criticism (1941) gathered literary studies around a design of “precise and systematic” criticism that disciplined the “artistic values” of the text. During these years, close reading became a widespread teaching standard in American universities.

From the late 1950s onward, the movement faced criticism from various fronts: the Chicago neo-Aristotelians (R. S. Crane) objected to its monistic, single-method approach that ignored distinctions of genre and discourse; figures such as Northrop Frye and Lionel Trilling highlighted the risk of slipping into an apolitical and ahistorical formalism; Douglas Bush, in PMLA (1949), raised critiques of cliquishness and elitism.

In the late 1960s, structuralism and especially the post-structuralist wave symbolized by the 1966 Johns Hopkins symposium, weakened the hegemony of New Criticism in Anglo-American academia. Nevertheless, close reading continued to exist under different theoretical frameworks.

Although the movement has been labeled since the 1980s as an “outmoded paradigm,” the enduring role of close reading and renewed emphasis on form in movements such as “new formalism” have led to a reassessment of New Criticism. Collections such as Rereading the New Criticism have illuminated the theory’s contemporary resonance in literary and cultural studies by discussing its historical context and pedagogical legacy.

Resonances in Türkiye

In Türkiye, the critical writings and textbooks of Berna Moran offer examples of localizing New Criticism’s “text-centered” and “close reading” sensibilities; Moran applied the method to the extent required by the text itself, without turning it into a rigid template, and extended the emphasis on the inseparability of form and content to analyses of the modern Turkish novel.

Core Principles

New Criticism proposes that literary works be evaluated within the framework of artistic autonomy. The work is treated as a self-contained, closed, and unified structure. In this context, the most important critical method is the detailed analysis of the text’s linguistic and formal details, known as close readingis (close reading). Through this method, the work’s images, rhythm, symbols, and structural elements are examined in depth.

The main principles of the theory include:

• Intentional Fallacy: The view that interpretations based on the author’s intention are misleading, and therefore literary works must be evaluated solely through their internal structure. The legitimate basis of literary interpretation is not the author’s intention but the text itself; recourse to the author’s psychology is either irrelevant or misleading. According to this principle, developed by W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley, referring to the author’s intention is invalid for critical analysis. The meaning of the work can be derived only from the text itself.
• Heresy of Paraphrase: The belief that the meaning of a literary work cannot be summarized in other words because meaning is tightly bound to form. According to Cleanth Brooks’s emphasis, a literary text cannot be paraphrased, since content and form are inseparable; meaning is identical with the text’s structure.
• Autonomy of the Text: New Criticism regards the literary work as an autonomous structure, independent of historical context, the author’s biography, or reader responses, defined solely by its own aesthetic unity. The literary text is accepted as “a system governed by its own laws.”
• Close Reading: The central method of New Criticism is the detailed analysis focused on the text’s linguistic, formal, and structural features. Elements such as imagery, irony, paradox, symbol, and rhythm are meticulously examined.
• Affective Fallacy: Reducing the value of a work to the reader’s personal emotional responses is considered erroneous. Criticism must be grounded in the structural properties of the text, independent of individual feelings.
• Form-Content Unity: New Criticism views the form and content of a work as an inseparable whole. Meaning emerges only in conjunction with formal arrangements. Therefore, literary works are evaluated as organic unities.

These principles established the theoretical foundation of close reading (meticulous attention to linguistic, rhythmic, imagistic, and structural elements) and ensured the conception of the work as a “closed, unified structure.”

Impact and Criticisms

New Criticism played a significant role in establishing literature as a scientific discipline within academia. It became the dominant approach to literary education in American universities for many decades. In Türkiye, critics such as Berna Moran also drew upon New Criticism’s text-centered methods in their analyses.

However, from the 1960s onward, it was criticized by structuralist, Marxist, and post-structuralist theories for excluding historical and social context, and for ignoring the ideological and cultural dimensions of texts.