The birth of New Criticism Childs, Donald J
The birth of New Criticism,
2013, 2014-01-07, 2013-12-01
eBook
Amid competing claims about who first developed the theories and practices that became known as New Criticism - the critical method that rose alongside Modernism - literary historians have generally ...given the lion's share of credit to William Empson and I.A. Richards. In The Birth of New Criticism Donald Childs challenges this consensus and provides a new and authoritative narrative of the movement's origins. At the centre stand Robert Graves and Laura Riding, two poet-critics who have been written out of the history of New Criticism. Childs brings to light the long-forgotten early criticism of Graves to detail the ways in which his interpretive methods and ideas evolved into the practice of "close reading," demonstrating that Graves played such a fundamental part in forming both Empson's and Richards's critical thinking that the story of twentieth-century literary criticism must be re-evaluated and re-told. Childs also examines the important influence that Riding's work had on Graves, Empson, and Richards, establishing the importance of this long-neglected thinker and critic. A provocative and cogently argued work, The Birth of New Criticism is both an important intellectual history of the movement and a sharply observed account of the cultural politics of its beginnings and legacy.
Drawing on a number of histories of literary studies from the United States, Britain, and France, this article reexamines the debates on the institutional self-definition of the subject. The ideals ...associated with research and scholarship, it is argued (following an analysis proposed by Hans Blumenberg), have their historical origin in the concept of method introduced by Descartes, and subsequently central to the natural and the social sciences. This ideal is here argued to represent an unacknowledged line of continuity between the philologists and historical scholars with whom academic literary studies began, the New Critics, and contemporary theoretical modes of literary studies. This article points to the dissidence to this model which appears in each of the national traditions of literary studies. This dissidence, it is argued, has its foundation and its legitimation in the distinction between the subject of reading (and criticism) and the subject of method. While this distinction was made as an objection to the research model, it could not have been articulated prior to the establishment of literary studies as a field of academic research; in this sense, it can be said to be the question that the field itself has posed, and ought to be integrated into its self-understanding.
Newspaper reviews will often debate a production's claim to the name "Shakespeare", generally whenever that production is perceived to have departed too far from Shakespearean authority. This article ...questions the authority assigned by mainstream theatre reviewers to the Shakespearean text, and examines the role played by these reviewers in negotiating the scope and enforcing the boundaries of contemporary Shakespearean performance. Particular attention is paid to Théâtre de Complicite's The Winter's Tale (1992), Vesturport's Romeo and Juliet (2003) and Kneehigh Theatre's Cymbeline (2006).
In this lively and provocative book, cultural critic Marjorie Garber, who has written on topics as different as Shakespeare, dogs, cross-dressing, and real estate, explores the pleasures and pitfalls ...of the academic life. Academic Instincts discusses three of the perennial issues that have surfaced in recent debates about the humanities: the relation between "amateurs" and "professionals," the relation between one academic discipline and another, and the relation between "jargon" and "plain language." Rather than merely taking sides, the book explores the ways in which such debates are essential to intellectual life. Garber argues that the very things deplored or defended in discussions of the humanities cannot be either eliminated or endorsed because the discussion itself is what gives humanistic thought its vitality.
In July/August 1946, American psychologist David Pablo Boder visited displaced persons (DP) camps in France, Switzerland, and Germany, where he recorded audio-interviews with recent concentration ...camps inmates. In 1948, Boder proposed for publication a selection of interviews recorded verbatim, together with a brief historical survey and a detailed analysis of one of the interviews from his selection. For his analysis, Boder chose the Formalist methodology of textual reading. Evidently inspired by interest in the phenomenon of the sounding word in turn-of-the-century Russian culture, he believed that the collections of victims' audio-testimonies would be perceived, using today's terminology, as multi-media art of the catastrophe. This article focuses on the aesthetic component of Boder's project, namely, his interpretation of victims' testimonies from the point of view of literature as art, while also analyzing his concept of the particular aesthetic value of the testimonies and their broader relevance.
A Genealogy of Structuralism.
What are the links between formalism and structuralism ? This article suggests that all theories are also a narration that can be analyzed based on the context of their ...development and the journey of their authors — Roman Jakobson, René Wellek, Jan Mukarovský, followed by the young generation of the 1960s. The narrative does not always follow a clear and continuous line ; when studying this type of narrative construction, one seizes mutations, ruptures, and silences. The article looks at these silences, showing that they may be meaningful. In this analysis of the transfers of knowledge between the formalist and the structuralist movements, the author looks at the reception of these theories and brings out the clichés that may have conveyed certain representations, often of an ideological nature, as well as the gaps which, at the time, characterized Western and Czechoslovak readings of these theories and thus the links between them.
Une généalogie du structuralisme.
Quels liens relient le formalisme au structuralisme ? L’article suggère que toute théorie est aussi une narration qui peut être analysée à partir du contexte de son élaboration et du parcours de ses auteurs – Roman Jakobson, René Wellek, Jan Mukarovský, suivis de la jeune génération des années 1960. Le récit qui se dégage ne suit pas toujours une ligne claire et continue ; en étudiant ce type de construction narrative, on saisit ses mutations, ruptures et silences. L’article interroge ces silences en montrant que ceux-ci peuvent être porteurs de sens. Dans son analyse des transferts de connaissance entre les mouvements formaliste et structuraliste, l’auteur s’intéresse à la réception de ces théories, et fait ressortir les clichés qu’ont pu véhiculer certaines représentations, souvent idéologiques, ainsi que les écarts qui ont distingué à l’époque les lectures occidentales et tchécoslovaques de ces théories, et, partant, de leurs liens.
Una genealogía del estructuralismo.
¿ Qué vínculos unen el formalismo con el estructuralismo ? Este artículo sugiere que toda teoría es también una narración que puede analizarse a partir del contexto de su elaboración y de la trayectoria de sus autores — Roman Jakobson, René Wellek, Jan Mukarovský, y luego la joven generación de los años 60. El relato que se desprende no siempre sigue una línea clara y continua ; estudiando este tipo de construcción narrativa, se entienden sus mutaciones, rupturas y silencios. El artículo cuestiona esos silencios mostrando que pueden ser significativos. En su análisis de las transferencias de conocimiento entre el movimiento formalista y el estructuralista, el autor se interesa por la recepción de estas teorías, recalcando los clichés que pudieron acarrear algunas representaciones, a menudo ideológicas, así como las diferencias que caracterizaron, en la época, las lecturas occidentales y checoeslovacas de dichas teorías, y por consiguiente los vínculos entre ambas.
Glanc Tomáš,Cirac Stéphanie,Roussin Philippe. Une généalogie du structuralisme. In: Communications, 103, 2018. Le formalisme russe cent ans après. pp. 197-211.
Before the rise of New Criticism and outside its institutions, prominent Victorians promoted close reading and critical thought as the backbone of mass education. Among them, John Cassell and John ...Ruskin incorporated literary-critical protocols as integral components of the pedagogical programs they directed to working-class readers. The protocols were popularly transmitted through periodical culture and motivated by reformist political goals. Though their methods differed, Cassell and Ruskin shared an investment in the strong social relevance of reading. Situating these cases within a longer genealogy of literary criticism and interpretation, this essay suggests that a more capacious history of close reading sheds new light on what remains a core method of literary study.
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