New Criticism:
Theory and Practice I -- Poetry
Outline
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New Criticism: Assumptions
New Criticism: Methodologies
Example 1: “A Slumber did My Spirit
Seal”
Example 2: “This is Just to Say”:
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an Intrinsic (New Critical) Analysis and
an Extrinsic one.
New Criticism: in Historical Context
Starting Questions
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Autonomy: Do you think that great writers such
as Shakespeare and Milton can transcend their
time and space? How about a text? Can a text
present universal experiences and speak to
people of different ages in the same way? How
about you? To what extent can you determine
your life and its meanings?
Textual Unity: Is it always possible to find in a
text unity of form and content, or of its
different parts? How do you deal with its
contradictions?
Objective reading: Is objective reading of a
poem possible? Is it possible to not involve
your personal experience?
New Criticism:
Major Assumptions
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(text pp. 41-42 )
A poem is an autonomy (獨立個體), its
meanings decided by itself alone, but not by
the author’s intention or the reader’s
emotional responses to it.
Intentional Fallacy (意圖謬誤),
Affective Fallacy (感情謬誤)
Poetry offers a different kind of truth (poetic
truth) than science, conveyed through its
dense language which cannot be translated.
Heresy of Paraphrase
Major Assumptions —Textual
Autonomy
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the poet‘s mind as a catalyst (觸媒)
Experience, objective
correlatives
CO2+葉綠素 光合作用
objective correlative
客觀對應物 (T.S. Eliot)
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An external object used to convey the writer’s
feeling, which is elevated to a universal level in
writing and the use of objective correlatives.
“The only way of expressing emotion in the
form of art is by finding an ‘objective
correlative’; in other words, a set of objects, a
situation, a chain of events which shall be the
formula of that particular emotion; such that
when the external facts, which must terminate
in sensory experience, are given, the emotion
is immediately evoked.” (“Hamlet and His Problems”)
objective correlative: e.g.
客觀對應物 (T.S. Eliot)
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e.g. Images of coldness in Hardy’s
“Neutral Tones”
e.g. “. . . the sun was white, as though chidden of
God ”
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“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
“Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized(乙醚麻醉) upon a table”
( Are they objective or subjective?)
New Criticism: Major Assumption (2)
– poetic truth
1. The text’s meaning resides within its own
structure.
2. organic unity:
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all of its elements (form and content, poetic
elements, tensions) form a “single unified effect.”
(text 43)
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all parts of a poem are interrelated and
interconnected, with each part reflecting and
helping to support the poem's central
idea. ...allows for the harmonization of conflicting
ideas, feelings, and attitudes, ...
New Criticism: Methodology
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New Criticism’s synonyms = objective
criticism, practical criticism, textual
criticism, close reading (text 38)
the "text and the text alone" approach
New Criticism on Poetry
(text 44 - 45)
1. Pay close attention to the text’s diction its
meanings (connotation and denotation) and
even its etymological roots.
 2. Study the poetic elements closely.
e.g.詩律（prosody）、比喻語言（明喻、暗喻、
擬人法、頓呼法）
 3. Search for structure and patterns; e.g.
oppositions in the text (paradox, ambiguity,
irony)
 4. From Parts to an Organic Wholeness
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New Criticism:
Methodology (1) Poetry
Whole
 Parts
Denotations, connotations
and etymological roots
 Allusions
Themes
 Prosody
pattern, tension,
 Relationships
ambiguities,
among
paradox,
the various elements
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contradictions
New Criticism:
Methodology (1) Narrative
Whole
 Parts
Point of view,
 dialogue,
 setting,
Themes
 Plot
 Characterization
pattern, tension,
 Relationships
ambiguities,
among
paradox,
the various elements
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contradictions
“A Slumber Did my Spirit Seal”
1. Circle the important words 2. Find patterns
A slumber did my spirit seal;
Light sleep,
I had no human fears:
death
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.
Negative; no
action no
feelings
No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
William Wordsworth 1799
“A Slumber Did my Spirit Seal”
pattern 2: rhymes and
contradictions
A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
Negatives resolved by the cosmic positives.
“A Slumber Did my Spirit Seal”
Possible Argument
Her death is accepted by the speaker as
time goes by, first by having no fear of
mortality, and then by developing a
broader view of her being one in
universe.
Supported by the long vowels, and long
sentences.
 Is it a complete acceptance?
“A Slumber Did my Spirit Seal”
pattern 2: rhymes and
contradictions
A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.
A gap
No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
“A Slumber Did my Spirit Seal”
Revised Argument
With regret over her loss of human
actions, the speaker manages to accept
her death, first by having no fear of
mortality, and then by developing a
broader view of her being one in
universe.
Traditional/Extrinsic Questions:
“A Slumber Did my Spirit Seal”
Author/Biographical study: Who wrote it? How do we know?
Who is ‘she’? When did she live and die? Why did she die?
How are the two related to each other in life?
Manuscript study: When was it first published? When first
written? Is there a manuscript version? Are there any
textual variants between manuscripts and printed
versions? . . .
History of Ideas: Are the poem’s philosophical or moral ideas
characteristic of the author, or the period in which it was
written? Does the poem reveal any literary or philosophical
influences?
A Handbook to Literary Research. Eds. Simon Eliot and W.R. Owens. NY: Routledge in
Association with Open U, 1998: 86.
This Is Just To Say (Intrinsic)
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.
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you were probably
saving
for breakfast
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Lack of
punctuation;
The title
irregular syntax
This Is Just To Say (Extrinsic)
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William Carlos
Williams’
experimenting with
type-writer
the influence of
Imagism and Haiku
Comparison with the
other poems or texts
on food?
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Free Associations?
This Is Just To Say : Main Idea
for Paper Writing?
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1. Despite the apparently casual
title and syntax matching the
banality of its topic, the poem
reveals and celebrates the
sensual beauty of daily objects.
“This Is Just To Say” : Other
possible readings
1.
2.
3.
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The poem could be concerned with the
uselessness or self-entrapment of sexual desire,
comparable to "Th'expense of spirit in a waste
of shame.“
There's the potential Oedipal reading, with the
boy thwarted in an attempt to comprehend his
origin; to learn of it from his mother.
Or there's the reading that would suggest selfreferentiality; it is the poem itself that "means
nothing."
From World, Self, Poem: Essays on Contemporary Poetry from the "Jubilation of Poets." Ed. Leonard M.
Trawick. Copyright © 1990 by The Kent State University Press.
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/williams/just.htm
New Criticism in Context
Extrinsic studies:
e.g. biographic studies, textual
scholarship
(historical studies),
Impressionist approach,
 New Criticism: set up literary studies as
a professional discipline
 // Russian Formalism
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New Criticism: Historical
context
After the second world war
 Like existentialism, New Criticism tries to
retain human values.
 New Critics 1. re-direct critical attention
from the external to the internal
(textual),
2. Upholds liberal humanism in face of
worldly chaos. (The most valuable is our
free will.)
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Williams’ explanation of why
"This Is Just To Say" is a poem.
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. . . in an interview of 1950, John W. Gerber asked the poet what
it is that makes "This Is Just To Say" a poem, Williams replied, "In
the first place, it metrically absolutely regular. . . .So, dogmatically
speaking, it has to be a poem because it goes that way, don't you
see!" But the. . .stanzas exhibit no regularity of stress or of
syllable count; indeed, except for lines 2 and 5 (each an iamb)
and lines 8 and 9 (each an amphibrach), no two lines have the
same metrical form. What then can Williams mean when he says,
"It's metrically absolutely regular"? Again, he mistakes sight for
sound: on the page, the three little quatrains look alike; they
have roughly the same physical shape. It is typography rather
than any kind of phonemic recurrence that provides directions for
the speaking voice (or for the eye that reads the lines silently)
and that teases out the poem's meanings.
Marjorie Perloff From The dance of the intellect: Studies in the poetry of the pound tradition.
Copyright © 1985 by Cambridge University Press.
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/williams/just.htm