Institute of Distance and Open Learning Gauhati University

ENG-02-XIII (1) Institute of Distance and Open Learning Gauhati University MA in English Semester 3 Paper XIII Theory III – Twentieth Century Criticism Block 1 Trends in Formalism Contents: Block Introduction: Unit 1 : New Criticism Unit 2 : Cleanth Brooks: “The Heresy of Paraphrase” Unit 3 : F. R. Leavis: “The Line of Wit” Unit 4 : T. S. Eliot: “Tradition and the Individual Talent” Unit 5 : Russian Formalism Unit 6 : Victor Shklovsky: “Art as Technique” (1) Contributors: Prasenjit Das : Asstt. Professor in English (Units 2 & 3) KKHSOU, Guwahati Dalim Chandra Das : Counsellor in English (Units 1, 4, 5 & 6) IDOL, Gauhati University Editorial Team: Dr. Kandarpa Das : Director IDOL, GU Dr. Uttara Debi : Asstt. Professor in English IDOL, GU Prasenjit Das : Asstt. Professor in English KKHSOU, Guwahati Manab Medhi : Guest Faculty in English IDOL, GU Sanghamitra De : Guest Faculty in English IDOL, GU Cover Page Designing: Kaushik Sarma : Graphic Designer CET, IITG July, 2011 © Institute of Distance and Open Learning, Gauhati University. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission in writing from the Institute of Distance and Open Learning, Gauhati University. Further information about the Institute of Distance and Open Learning, Gauhati University courses may be obtained from the University's office at IDOL Building, Gauhati University, Guwahati-14. Published on behalf of the Institute of Distance and Open Learning, Gauhati University by Dr. Kandarpa Das, Director and printed at J.S. Printer, Silpukhuri, Guwahati, Assam. Copies printed 1000. Acknowledgement The Institute of Distance and Open Learning, Gauhati University duly acknowledges the financial assistance from the Distance Education Council, IGNOU, New Delhi, for preparation of this material. (2) Block Introduction: Adequately named as ‘Trends in Formalism’, this is the third block of this course. Critical movements like New Criticism, and Formalism, of the early twentieth century were moving in a certain direction. The isolation of the ‘aesthetic’ from the moral, religious concerns and the exaltation of the ‘aesthetic’ as a defense against a commercialized and dehumanized world finally established the notion of criticism as a serious and scientific activity. Thus, most of the critical movements associated with literary theory—ranging from Formalism and New Criticism to Post-structuralism—arise out of certain specific socio-political and historical events of the twentieth century. However, it should be remembered that such historical developments bear a complex and often contradictory relation to literary practice and theory. For example, the 1917 Russian Revolution which propounded ‘Social Realism’, finally established literature as politically interventionist and as expressing class-struggle also spawned other aesthetic such as symbolism and formalism, the latter exerting a considerable influence on the development of structuralism in subsequent periods. This block is designed in such a way that you gain direct access to ideas of New Criticism and Russian Formalism. New Criticism, as you will gradually come to know, starts from an attempt to professionalize American literary studies during 1930s.What the American critics like John Crowe ransom, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks were trying to do, questioned the so-called triumph of modern science and capitalist culture which posited a threat to tradition and ‘everything that was not immediately useful—like poetry’. Like their English counterparts, these poet-critics turned towards their past culture which remained untouched by industrialization and commercialism. They saw poetry as a means of resisting commodification and superficiality. Because they believed that the internal organization—its formal structure—creates harmony out of opposites and tensions. Thus, poetry became their main object of study, because in creating coherent wholes out of variety and contradiction, poetry could transcend the chaos of actual experience. The genealogy of Formalism is perhaps even more interesting. Although Rene Wellek and Austin Warren in their book Theory of Literature gave serious attention to Slavic Formalist Literary Criticism, readers could have (3) little chance to examine the works themselves. History would tell us that during 1920s, a group of Russian Formalist critics urged the separation of literature from politics. But this is just a long and complex story of orthodox views in the Soviet Union. Since our purpose is to know the internal history of the movement called Russian Formalism and the theory it developed, we can easily find certain resemblances between New Criticism and Russian Formalism. The Formalists involved themselves with three of the New Critical activities—1. an assault on traditional academic scholarship; 2. the development of a critical theory which would separate literature from history, sociology, and philosophy, and 3. finding out a way to talk about literary works that would replace discussions of background, social usefulness or intellectual content with analysis of structure. Once you look at the units of this block, you will gain more insights into these two theoretical trends. In order to help your study, we have divided this block into six units in the following way. Contents: Unit 1 : New Criticism Unit 2 : Cleanth Brooks: “The Heresy of Paraphrase” Unit 3 : F. R. Leavis: “The Line of Wit” Unit 4 : T S Eliot: “Tradition and the Individual Talent” Unit 5 : Russian Formalism Unit 6 : Victor Shklovsky: “Art as Technique” (4) Unit 1 New Criticism Contents: 1.1 Objectives 1.2 Historical Background 1.3 Important Figures 1.3.1 I.A. Richards: (1893-1979) 1.3.2 William Empson: (1906-1984) 1.3.3 Allen Tate: (1899-1979) 1.3.4 John Crowe Ransom: (1888-1974) 1.3.5 William Wimsatt, Jr. (1907-1975) and Monroe C. Beardsley: (1915-1985) 1.4 Key Concepts 1.4.1 Autonomy of the Text 1.4.2 Intentional Fallacy 1.4.3 Affective Fallacy 1.4.4 Irony and Paradox 1.4.5 Ambiguity 1.4.6 Metaphor 1.4.7 Tension 1.4.8 Organic Form/Unity 1.5 Summing up 1.6 References and Suggested Readings 1.1 OBJECTIVES New criticism was an influential critical movement in the course of modern literary criticism. If it is in some ways aligned with Structuralism and Russian Formalism, more recent trends such as Marxism, Post-structuralism, Feminist or New-historicism developed as reaction against the New-critical ethos. By the end of this unit you will be able to Ä familiarise yourself with the historical background and philosophical heritage of New Criticism Ä discuss how the movement is continuous with or departs from critical tendencies and theorization prevalent in earlier times (5) Ä find out important critics and literary scholars associated with New Criticism Ä explore ideas and concepts central to this particular school of criticism. 1.2 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND The term ‘New Criticism’ was coined by John Crowe Ransom in his book entitled The New Criticism published in 1941. It implies a theory and a form of practice prevalent in Anglo-American literary criticism between 1940s and 1960s. Three important books that served as the foundational text of this critical movement are Principles of Literary Criticism (1924), Practical Criticism (1929), and Understanding Poetry (1938). Various critical essays of T.S. Eliot also paved the way for the development of New Criticism. During the course of your studying New Criticism, you might ask yourself— where does New Criticism stand in the tradition of English literary criticism? Firstly, it can be argued that it is a reaction against some of the important critical insights and tendencies of the Romantics whose dominant tendency was to see the value and significance of literary work as the result of authorial intention or the ‘expression’ of the intention of the authors. The root of literary truth thus lies in the sincerity of emotions and feelings experienced by the author. New Criticism dispensed with the question of author while assessing a work of art. Secondly, it is a reaction against the historical and philological approaches to literature— a thrust then prevalent in the arena of literary study. John Crowe Ransom, for instance, when he was Carnegie Professor of Poetry at Kenyon College, organized academic discussions regularly pleading for a pure criticism that could overthrow historical and philological scholarship then in vogue in the universities. He argued for exclusive focus on the literary techniques rather than on biography, morality, psychology and sought to replace extrinsic with ‘intrinsic’ criticism. Thirdly, during the heyday of New Criticism, criticism became a self-contained academic discipline. It is not that literary works were not part of the curriculum in schools and universities in the English-speaking world, but study of literature was included in various disciplines—rhetoric, philology, history. But criticism did not play any significant part. However, from the 1920s, there started a sudden vogue in academic institutions of critical interpretation which included analysis and introduction of evaluative judgment of literary works. (6) Is there any common agenda of this New Critical school? Key theorists and thinkers associated with this school have their own agenda and propositions. In fact, there are differences and disagreements amongst the New Critics themselves. Yet they all agree upon the question of the object of literary criticism. The basic assumption was that reading a text in terms of authorial intention, effect on the reader or its historical context cannot do justice to the text which is a texture of variously patterned linguistic elements. The text is an autonomous, self-contained entity and is itself the proper object of criticism. A text must be studied in its own terms and extra-textual yardsticks should not be brought to bear upon it. Stop to Consider: New Criticism and Empiricism New Criticism not merely talks about literary text as the object of literary study, it also dwells extensively on the ‘nature’ of ‘textual experience’.

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