Meaning is subjective
 Closed reading of the text
 Developed during the modernist era
 Ignores the past works and biography of the author
 Looks for the best meaning of the work
 Played a role in creating I. A. Richards, T. S. Eliot, David Daiches, William
Empson, Murray Krieger, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren,R. P.
Blackmur, Ausin Warren, and Ivor Winters.
Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream
The Emperor of
Ice Cream
•Curds represent what
society deems to be
unclean and thus below
recognition
•In actuality curds make
many dairy, like cheese
yogurt and ice cream
•Wallace Stevens point
is not to discount what
seems to be irrelevant
biology.clc.uc.edu
According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring
sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings' wax
a farmer was ploughing
his field
unsignificantly
the whole pageantry
off the coast
there was
of the year was
awake tingling
a splash quite unnoticed
near
this was
Icarus drowning
the edge of the sea
concerned
with itself
Landscape With
the Fall of Icarus
• Pieter Bruegel
• Objective?
• Subjective:
• “a farmer was
pouching / his
field” (Williams 45)
• “the whole
pageantry / of the
year was / awake
tingling”
(Williams 6-8)
• “unsignificantly”
(Williams 16)
http://www.artchive.com/viewer/z.html
“I, too, dislike it: there are things that
are important beyond/
all this fiddle./”
“Reading it, however, with a perfect
contempt for it, one/ discovers in/ it
after all, a place for the genuine.”
“these things are important not
because a high-sounding
interpretation can be put upon them
but because/ they are/ useful”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
“we do not admire what we cannot
understand:”
“the bat/ holding on upside down or in
quest of something to/ eat, elephants
pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a
tireless/ wolf under/ a tree,”
“when dragged into prominence by half
poets, the/ result is not poetry”
“Literalist of the imagination”
“imaginary gardens with real toads in
them”
“if you demand on the one hand/ the raw
material of poetry in/ all its rawness and /
that which is on the other hand/ genuine,
you are interested in poetry.”
The work of hunters is another thing:
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
I have come after them and made repair
He only says, 'Good fences make good
Where they have left not one stone on a stone, neighbors'.
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, If I could put a notion in his head:
No one has seen them made or heard them
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
made,
Where there are cows?
But at spring mending-time we find them
But here there are no cows.
there.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
What I was walling in or walling out,
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And to whom I was like to give offence.
And set the wall between us once again.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
We keep the wall between us as we go.
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
To each the boulders that have fallen to each. But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls He said it for himself. I see him there
We have to use a spell to make them balance: Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!' In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
He says again, "Good fences make good
My apple trees will never get across
neighbors."
Mending Wall
-- the “wall” Frost discusses would be
better visualized as a fence.
-- As the narrator and the famer walk
and talk to one another they
maintain their own side making sure
not to cross one another’s path.
“Good fences make good neighbors.”
-- The narrator seems confused as to
why the fence is put up, thinking
that a fences only purpose is to keep
subjects like animals in or out.
http://www.kenfiery.com/gallery/images/080.jpg
Leda
Where the slow river
meets the tide,
a red swan lifts red wings
and darker beak,
and underneath the purple down
of his soft breast
uncurls his coral feet.
Through the deep purple
of the dying heat
of sun and mist,
the level ray of sun-beam
has caressed
the lily with dark breast,
and flecked with richer gold
its golden crest.
Where the slow lifting
of the tide,
floats into the river
and slowly drifts
among the reeds,
and lifts the yellow flags,
he floats
where tide and river meet.
Ah kingly kiss –
no more regret
nor old deep memories
to mar the bliss;
where the low sedge is thick,
the gold day-lily
outspreads and rests
beneath soft fluttering
of red swan wings
and the warm quivering
of the red swan's breast.
All Greece hates
the still eyes in the white face,
the lustre as of olives
where she stands,
and the white hands.
All Greece reviles
the wan face when she smiles,
hating it deeper still
when it grows wan and white,
remembering past enchantments
and past ills.
Greece sees, unmoved,
God's daughter, born of love,
the beauty of cool feet
and slenderest knees,
could love indeed the maid,
only if she were laid,
white ash amid funereal cypresses.
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Leda and Helen
Background: Leda was the
mythological mortal raped by the god,
Zeus in form of swan. Helen was the
daughter of Zeus and Leda.
Doolittle wrote Leda as if it weren't a
rape. She uses imagery to describe the
act, “The slow lifting of the tide, floats
into the river and slowly drifts”. The lily
represents a woman and the swan a
man.
Helen is about Greece's hatred towards
her because they believe she caused
the Trojan war. It is about a statue of
her and the constant reminder of all
the hurt she caused. They hated
looking at her all the time and it only
made them hate her more.
Complimentary of paragonfineart.com
 http://www.kristisiegel.com/theory.htm#newcriticism
 wikimedia.org
 paragonfineart.com
 http://www.kenfiery.com/gallery/images/080.jpg
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/
 http://www.artchive.com/viewer/z.html
 biology.clc.uc.edu
 " The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym. 7th
Edition. Vol. C. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2007.