New Criticism

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

Ken Newton (University of Dundee)

Ed. by Graham Allen, University College Cork
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Domains

Literary Theory/ Critical approach

Dates

Date of occurrence 1930-1960

Places

United States (Location)

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New Criticism became a critical force in the United States in the late 1930s and until the 1960s was the most powerful critical perspective in American literary criticism. The major figures were John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Cleanth Brooks, Robert Penn Warren, and W. K.Wimsatt, Jr. Other figures more loosely associated with it were F. R. Leavis, Kenneth Burke, René Wellek, Yvor Winters, and R. P. Blackmur. Though it is primarily an American phenomenon, the significant influences on it were British by birth or adoption. The criticism of T. S. Eliot was crucial. Eliot had great status as one of the leading Modernist writers and his criticism was therefore perceived to be of special value. Modernist literature presented traditional forms of literary criticism with a problem, for the…

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2500 words

Citation: Newton, Ken. "New Criticism". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 19 November 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=768, accessed 25 November 2024.]

New Criticism

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