On new criticism

[tZar]

Okay, we had a rough start talking about deconstruction, so this time I will keep it simple – and when I say that it is probably very relative☺

I would like to talk a bit about new criticism, and I hope a few of you find it interesting – or at least as interesting as the piece on deconstruction. I also hope more will join in the dialogue.

So new criticism was created to put the text in focus, and not history, or social relations or the author etc. It tries to reclaim the text as autonomous (independent). This leads us to a few things to avoid when reading a text:

1: Avoid the intentional fallacy: This means that we cannot argue the meaning of a text, saying that it was what the author tried to convey. Basically what the author wanted with the text is irrelevant; only what the text wants is relevant!
2: Avoid the affective fallacy: This means that we should not confuse the texts intention with what it does to the reader. Do not make your reaction to a text a part of the text!
3: The text does not have meaning, it is: The text is its inner tensions, its structure, form disposition etc. This mean that we cannot draw out THE meaning of the text, it is not unambiguous.

So to read in a new critical manner we have to ‘close read’. This means that we dig deep into the text and use long time to read it. Making this a bit more clear I will put forth a model of getting into the text, but I must say already now, that analysing a text using a model, almost always works against the intention. The text is a living body, and cannot be grasped with an analytical model. Therefore, this is not something which should be used as a step-by-step tool to get the meaning out of a text. It is to clarify which aspects to look for in a text, and as soon as I have written this, I am sure I will regret it.

The following model takes in some aspects which are closely connected to reading poetry and short stories. I you were to look for all these aspects in a novel or longer prose text, you would probably die…
I will in the next post try shortly to address the use of new criticism when reading longer prose texts.

First of all. If it is a shorter text, a poem or such, or a real study of a text, then read it several times. Even try to find different narrations of the text: just read it slowly, read it out loud, have it read out loud. Basically get comfortably with the text, the style etc.
Secondly: Close reading means that you should be open to the text; open with feeling, experiences and knowledge, BUT it must be the text which regulates which of these preconditions is set into use. The rule is that we own the author the chance to get his say before we use his text in a personal context.

Also remember that the title is the first thing which we see of a text, but try to keep in mind that it often is the last thing the author gives the text; therefore try to start the interpretation in the first paragraph (this is not new criticism as such, just a common sense approach to the text!)

Now lets get to the text:
1: The graphical layer
- Look at the layout (some poems use layouts to add meaning. Visual pivoting points etc.)
- Paragraph/stanza lengths, visual effects, capitalization etc.
2: The sound layer
- Rhyme, rhythm, vowel sounds etc.
- Pace of the text: does it try to slow you down, or pick up your pace. This can be through the length of words, sentences, paragraphs or whole chapters.
3: Units of meaning
- Syntax (choice of words), symbolic names, themes, motifs or topics.
- Try to organise the words or names different ‘fields’. This helps to create coherence between parts.
4: The syntactical layer
- Analytical, synthetic usage of language, active/passive sentence constructions
- Word classes and how they are used
- Clauses – active/passive
5: The structural layer
- Metaphors
- Symbolic text
6: Large units
- Time
- Place
- Characters and plot
- Milieu
- Presented problems/ideas
- Composition
7: The narrator
- Who is telling the story (not the one who have written the story).
- Credibility
- The narrator opinions towards ideas, characters etc. (use of irony, pathos etc.)

Okay – now what is the text trying to tell us? What is the meaning?


I know that these points are all taking place at the same time when reading, here they are split up to create a general view.


Remember that you do not have to write a whole lot to do all this, you just have to give yourself time while reading. If this is all to complicated, notes are always a good help.

 

[tZar]

On reading longer prose texts

As you can probably imagine from the last post, reading a novel and analysing it using new criticism as your literary theory is quit an accomplishment. All the aspect you would have to keep in mind all the time. Jut the time it would take you reading a novel would be enormous.
There have been given several answers on how to handle all this, for the common reader. When I read and use elements of new criticism to interpret a novel, I try to find what is called patterns.
The expression was coined by a Danish professor (Finn Stein Larsen) who wanted to make new criticism relevant in reading longer prose texts at university, colleges etc.

Patterns in a text, has to do with grasping the plot of a text, and close reading the meaning of the plot. By looking for patterns, we are looking for systems of lines, stylized figures or the likes, which runs through the text and which return throughout the text.

So every text has one or more patterns which relates to the entire text, or the text as a whole. The regular returning figures are what pulls the text together as a whole; one unit. The patterns happen by a repetition of this unity. The pattern which creates the unity is the first conspicuous and identifiable compositional part of the whole, which is made object for a simple or varied repetition. This fundamental unit of the text is called the texts key.

So we now have to look at the two different types of repetitions: simple and varied.

A simple repetition is an identical repetition. This is very rare, as contexts, wherein the repetitions happens, changes throughout the text, giving the repetitions small modifications. This would transform the simple repetition into a varied repetition (that’s simple, right?). The thing is that if we encounter simple repetition, it will tell us that there is a lack of dynamic/development. This could be in relation to the plot, characters etc. Therefore it is important to notice!

The varied repetition takes two basic forms: repetition and unfolding. A repetition exposes the key to repetitions in illustration and conception. Time factors and development factors are essential conditions. In unfolding the key will gain in depth, complexity and ‘volume’, throughout the text. Time and development factors play no role in this. Throughout the text you will see the key gain layer upon layer of nuances, showing a rich and full theme, which is more or less static.

So the patterns are what tells you what the plot is about, and it is what unfolds the plot step-by-step.
If we look at literature to apply this too, I found it very useful when reading 100 years of solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I see the texts key as being solitude and it is the pattern of describing this solitude which is the repetition throughout the text. We quickly pick up un the static nature of time and development, and see that it is an unfolding repetition. As the pattern paragraph upon paragraph is unfolded, the body of the theme is build and filled with nuances. Therefore by reading the text using new criticism as a literary theoretical guidance, the close reading of the text, is then focused on which new aspects of the pattern the new repetition unfolds. The brilliance and sharpness of the repetitions are what makes this a GREAT novel.

Of course there are other approaches which will give you other aspects, and show you other sides of the novel – so will an adjustment of the key, for as you will see with a little practice, the texts key isn’t completely static. Also great works of literature have a tendency to surprise you and add even more to what you have already got, even though you are looking for the same things.

Well I hope you found this useful.

-tZar

 

[Peder]

Well I hope you found this useful.

-tZar

It is all food for thought, and provides a different way of looking at reading for me. Parts seem familiar and parts are new, so I am glad you have taken the time to put all this together for our benefit. Maybe if I look at Marquez' Solitide this way, I"ll get all the way through it, instead of only half way.

 

[tZar]

It is all food for thought, and provides a different way of looking at reading for me. Parts seem familiar and parts are new, so I am glad you have taken the time to put all this together for our benefit. Maybe if I look at Marquez' Solitide this way, I"ll get all the way through it, instead of only half way.

Maybe it could be fun to start a thread where we try to interpret small pieces of prose or poems using different literary theories as guidelines, to see what kind of 'meaning' they then produce...

 

[silverseason]

Maybe it could be fun to start a thread where we try to interpret small pieces of prose or poems using different literary theories as guidelines, to see what kind of 'meaning' they then produce...

Thank you for your clear description of New Criticism and your examples. Your explanation is much better than anything I received in college, where New Criticism was much in vogue at the time. The complexities of the later novels of Henry James were greatly admired and New criticized.

For me, at least, it works unevenly. Even now, 50 years post college, I find that some of the concepts help with a difficult text, but get in the way of others. We were told never to go outside the text. Can you really perceive all the patterns and layers in Middlemarch if you have no kowledge of the social and political situation in England at that time?

Start a thread with a short poem, perhaps something by Yeats or Hopkins.

 

[Peder]

Maybe it could be fun to start a thread where we try to interpret small pieces of prose or poems using different literary theories as guidelines, to see what kind of 'meaning' they then produce...

I would be an interested listener in such a thread, but very far from being able to contribute anything since literary theories are so unfamiliar to me. I would be very interested in seeing what they produce, however.