Teaching with New Critics

CLEaR ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 34-40
Author(s):  
Anton Pokrivčák

Abstract Anglo-American New Criticism was one of the most important movements in the twentieth century literary theories. It stressed the objectivity of a literary work of art and claimed that literary critics as well as teachers should concentrate, primarily, on the text, its linguistic structures and the ambiguities of meaning resulting from them, and only secondarily on the text´s extraliterary relationships. After the New Critics´ popularity in the early decades of the last century, in its second part they were refused as pure formalists, supposedly unable to see the real nature of a literary work in its social circumstances. The article attempts to reassess New Criticism as a movement which contributed significantly to the reading and teaching literature and claims that their importance has not diminished even in the twenty-first century.

PMLA ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 125 (4) ◽  
pp. 924-930 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monika Fludernik

Literary theory in the twentieth century was heavily influenced by linguistics. The structuralist model that set the waves of literary theories in motion originated in Saussurean linguistics and its Jakobsonian elaborations. One could argue that until the 1980s all literary theory, and all linguistics for that matter, was based on an analysis of langue, or the system of language or literature or text, to the detriment of parole, the practices, contexts, and negotiations of speakers, writers, and readers. The structuralist model, with its theoretical expansion of close-reading practices, already entrenched in the wake of the New Criticism, generalized the frame of mind that was soon to become the bogeyman of poststructuralist and cultural studies attacks. The formula could be summarized as No history, no ethics, no themes, no aesthetics, and no context—period.


Author(s):  
Andy Hines

Formed in response to philological, historical, and moral methods of teaching literature in the mid-1930s, the New Criticism was an American critical movement that insisted poetry should be read as a distinctive object of communication, not a moralizing lesson or a biographical example. The New Critics sought to make the formalist interpretation of poetry the focus of literary education. While their hermeneutics de-emphasized the role of politics, history, and authorial intent, the push for the acceptance of criticism in the academy was part of a political effort to preserve tradition in the face of mass culture.


Author(s):  
عبد الفتاح محمد عادل

Literary studies, in its two sides: teaching literature and studying literature, have suffered from a split in the profession between literary pedagogy and literary theories. A survey of the experience of some famous scholars who have tackled this issue in their writings is conducted to pinpoint the neglect in the part of people specialized in literary studies of the practical side of their work. Two points of convergence between literary pedagogy and literary theory are discussed. The first one presented two cases in which literary pedagogy was highly influenced by the ideas of two major shifts in critical theory: the formalist tendency of New Criticism and the reader-oriented tendency of the reader response approach. The second one discussed the efforts of the American educationalist and theorist Louise Rosenblatt in providing a theory of reading literary works in the light of what takes place in literature classrooms. The conclusions derived from this discussion lead to recommendations concerning the importance of making teaching of literature one of the academic interests and student preparation in departments of literature.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 33-42
Author(s):  
Yu. V. Mironova ◽  
T. I. Sokolskaya

The article is focused on the diversity of literary discourse which is viewed through the prism of “the internal life of the text” and is considered as a dialogue within “the life and power” of the language. As an object of interdisciplinary scientific research literary discourse is perceived as a complex metalinguistic phenomenon, which is inherently dialogic in its character and able to generate certain reality in which modern human beings live and act. In the triad “discourse – language – language personality” the median marker is viewed as “the house of being” (M. Heidegger), “the spirit of the nation” (W. Humboldt), which allows for the understanding of flickering ideas standing behind the creativity of a modern poet.This paper provides the interpretation of the linguistic dynamics of textual space as one of the possible methods of understanding “the life and power” of the text, which helps to objectively represent the notion of “language as the house of spirit” and the spirituality of modern poetry.The purpose of the article is to study the discourse of a literary work of art as a cognitive dialogue about “language as the house of spirit” and reveal the dynamics of “the spirit” within “the soul of the text”. It should be underlined that the multidimensional character of literary discourse provides for several levels in studying a literary text:Level 1: “the text and the reality”;Level 2: “the text and the language”;Level 3: “the author and the text”;Level 4: “the reader and the text”.The research is based on the analysis of the poetic essays by Tamara Sokolskaya – “The Honesuckle” and “Poetic Ariozo. G#HF#E”.The methods employed in the paper include modeling and interpretation of the linguistic dynamics of the textual space, contrastive and synergetic analysis of the “life and power” of the text and the method of conceptual analysis.The findings of the research comprise the following the results:1. Literary discourse is specific in its multidimensional character and the variety of expressed ideas, which sets it apart from other types of discourse;2. This multidimensional character of literary discourse reveals the complexity of the spiritual life of the author of the text.3. The synergy in the dynamics of textual units demonstrates spiritual content of modern poetry which exists at different levels of consciousness.4. Literary discourse serves as the material realization of the spiritual energy of a person.5. Literary discourse should be viewed as a cognitive dialogue about “language as the house of spirit” which reveals “the dialectic of the spirit” of the author and the dynamics of “the life and power” of the text as a multicultural language code representing the spiritual energy of the nation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 746-766
Author(s):  
Vladimir I. Ozymenko ◽  
Tatiana V. Larina

The impact of mass media on individuals and society is to a great extent based on emotions. We concentrate on fear as it is one of the basic emotions triggered by risk and threat, which is claimed to play a key role in the twenty-first century consciousness (Furedi 20018). The study focuses on the emotionalisation of fear in contemporary media discourse about Russia, more specifically, on constructions of Russian threat and fear of Russia in Anglo-American media texts to highlight pragmatic effects and to speculate on possible purposes of such discourses. The study aims to explore the functioning of the lexemes threat and fear , in textual contexts with the focus on their pragma-discursive characteristics. It identifies the mechanisms as well as linguistic tools involved in media strategies of scare-mongering. The dataset was derived from quality British and American newspapers in the period 2018-2020, and was analysed drawing on an interdisciplinary approach combining critical discourse analysis, pragmatics, medialinguistics, psycholinguistics and the theory of proximisation. The paper argues that appealing to emotions as well as constructing emotions is aimed at enhancing the persuasive function of media and fulfilling their own agenda. The persistent use of the words threat and fear in relation to Russia as well as the obsessive discussion of this topic in media aim to shape a certain negative public opinion of Russia among readerships. The findings show that to achieve this goal different strategies and linguistic tools are used including: exaggeration, repetition, proximisation, interrogative headlines, presupposition, among others. The results go beyond linguistics, and may find implementation in political studies, since they provide researchers with tools for understanding contemporary social and political processes.


2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 132
Author(s):  
Hamdi Hameed Yousif

One of the post-modernist approaches to literary criticism is the queer criticism which has not been evaluated properly. Queer criticism can refer to any piece of literary criticism that interprets a text from a non-straight perspective. Therefore, it includes both lesbian and gay criticism. The aim of this paper, therefore, is to trace the social and political reasons behind the emergence of Queer criticism in the late twentieth century till it acquired momentum in the twenty-first century. After trying to define the terms related to the Queer criticism, the paper tries to examine the poetics of queer (gay and lesbian) literary works and to point out the main characteristic features of this critical approach by identifying the criteria and the textual evidence by which a literary work is labeled queer. It, also tries to shed light on the common features between queer criticism and feminism, on the one hand, and queer criticism and the deconstructuralist approach on the other hand. The final section of the study is a critique which points out the negative aspects of this approach.


Hikma ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (15) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfredo Hermosillo López

<p>Resumen:</p><p>Este artículo analiza la teoría de los cuatro estratos del filósofo polaco Roman Ingarden. Tiene el propósito de mostrar que sus conceptos sobre la lectura activa y la obra de arte literaria, además de ser el punto de partida de los estudios de recepción desarrollados más ampliamente por Hans-Robert Jauss y Wolfgang Iser, pueden utilizarse como fundamento teórico para el análisis de traducciones literarias.</p><p> </p><p><em>A</em><em>bstract:</em></p><p>This article analyses the theory of the four strata proposed by the Polish philosopher Roman Ingarden. Its main purpose is to show that Ingarden’s concepts regarding the active reading and the literary work of art, besides from being the starting point of the literary reception studies, developed more widely by Hans-Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser, can also be used as a theoretical foundation for the analysis of literary translations.</p>


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