UGC NET ENGLISH UNIT 8 : Modernist & New Criticism

English Unit - 8 : Modernist & New Criticism: UGC-NET English

Modernist & New Criticism

Eliot's Tradition and Individual Talent, Richards' Practical Criticism, Wimsatt & Beardsley's Intentional Fallacy, Brooks' Well Wrought Urn.

"Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion." - T.S. Eliot

Key Concepts: Objective Correlative, Heresy of Paraphrase, Close Reading, Autotelic Art

Analyze New Criticism

Table of Contents

• 1. Modernism: Key Features
• 2. T.S. Eliot's Contributions
• 3. I.A. Richards' Practical Criticism
• 4. Wimsatt & Beardsley: Intentional Fallacy
• 5. Cleanth Brooks: The Well Wrought Urn
• 6. Key New Critical Concepts
• 7. Practice Questions
• 8. Critical Analysis

Key Takeaways

• New Criticism emphasizes close reading and textual analysis over authorial intent
• T.S. Eliot's "objective correlative" bridges emotion and artistic expression
• The "heresy of paraphrase" argues poems cannot be reduced to their paraphrasable content

Historical Context: 1910-1960

The Modernist movement emerged amidst:

• World War I's devastation and loss of faith in Western civilization
• Advances in psychology (Freud, Jung) changing conceptions of consciousness
• Rapid urbanization and technological changes disrupting traditional life
• New Criticism developed as an academic response to these changes, seeking objective methods to analyze complex Modernist works

1. Modernism: Key Features and Philosophical Underpinnings

Modernism (1910-1945) represented not just an artistic movement but a fundamental rethinking of human experience and artistic representation:

Core Characteristics

• Formal Experimentation:
  • Stream of consciousness (Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway)
  • Fragmentation (Eliot's The Waste Land)
  • Non-linear narratives (Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury)
  • Collage techniques incorporating multiple voices and texts
• Rejection of Victorian Values:
  • Challenged conventional morality (D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover)
  • Abandoned omniscient narration and linear plots
  • Embraced ambiguity and open-endedness
• Mythic Method:
  • Use of ancient myths to structure contemporary works (Joyce's Ulysses using Homer's Odyssey)
  • Collective unconscious as source of universal symbols

The Modernist Crisis of Representation

Modernist writers faced a fundamental challenge: how to represent a fragmented, post-war reality using language systems inherited from more stable periods. This led to:

1. Linguistic Skepticism: Doubt about language's ability to directly represent reality
2. Self-Reflexivity: Literature about literature (Pound's Hugh Selwyn Mauberley)
3. Intertextuality: Heavy reliance on references to other texts (Eliot's notes to The Waste Land)

Critical Debate: High Modernism vs. Late Modernism

Aspect	High Modernism (1910-1930)	Late Modernism (1930-1945)
Attitude	Radical, avant-garde	More conservative, institutionalized
Political Engagement	Mostly apolitical	Increasing political awareness
Form	Extreme experimentation	Partial return to traditional forms

2. T.S. Eliot's Theoretical Contributions: Beyond Tradition and Individual Talent

Tradition and Individual Talent (1919): Three Pillars

1. Historical Sense:

   Eliot argues that a poet must write "not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order." This:

   • Requires constant comparison and contrast with the past
   • Implies that new works alter our understanding of previous works
   • Creates an impersonal standard of judgment
2. Impersonal Theory of Poetry:

   Eliot's famous declaration that "poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality" revolutionized poetic theory by:

   • Rejecting Romantic self-expression
   • Emphasizing craft over inspiration
   • Comparing the poet's mind to a catalyst in a chemical reaction
3. Objective Correlative:

   Defined as "a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion" that the artist feels and hopes to evoke. Key aspects:

   • Provides concrete embodiment of abstract emotions
   • Creates universal communicability of feeling
   • Seen in Hamlet's inability to find an objective correlative for his disproportionate emotions

Eliot's Critical Development: 1917-1933

Period	Key Works	Theoretical Focus
Early (1917-1922)	"Tradition and Individual Talent", "Hamlet and His Problems"	Impersonality, objective correlative
Middle (1923-1927)	"The Function of Criticism"	Classicism in literature
Late (1928-1933)	"Dante" (1929), After Strange Gods (1933)	Religious and moral dimensions

Critical Controversies: Eliot's Theory

Eliot's theories have been both influential and controversial:

• Anti-Romanticism: His rejection of emotion in poetry has been challenged by neo-Romantic critics
• Elitism: The demand for extensive literary knowledge creates high barriers to poetic achievement
• Political Implications: Later critics have connected his classicism to conservative politics

For UGC-NET: Be prepared to compare Eliot's impersonal theory with Wordsworth's "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" from the Preface to Lyrical Ballads. This contrast between Romantic and Modernist poetics is frequently tested.

3. I.A. Richards: Foundations of Practical Criticism

Theoretical Framework

Richards' work established the methodological basis for New Criticism through several key concepts:

Four Kinds of Meaning (Practical Criticism, 1929)

1. Sense: What is said, the literal meaning
2. Feeling: The writer's emotional attitude toward the subject
3. Tone: The writer's attitude toward the reader
4. Intention: The writer's purpose (conscious or unconscious)

Two Uses of Language (Principles of Literary Criticism, 1924)

• Scientific: Referential, verifiable statements
• Emotive: Expressive, evocative language that organizes feelings and attitudes

Richards' Experimental Method

In his famous Cambridge experiments, Richards:

1. Distributed poems without titles or authors to students
2. Collected and analyzed their interpretations
3. Identified common reading errors ("stock responses", "mnemonic irrelevances")
4. Developed protocols for disciplined close reading

This method became the foundation for New Critical practice and modern literary pedagogy.

Richards vs. Later New Critics

While Richards pioneered close reading, he differed from later New Critics in important ways:

• More interested in reader psychology than textual autonomy
• Believed poetry could scientifically organize human impulses
• Less dogmatic about excluding biographical/historical context

4. Wimsatt & Beardsley: The Intentional Fallacy

The Foundational Essay (1946)

W.K. Wimsatt Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley's seminal essay "The Intentional Fallacy" established one of New Criticism's most controversial doctrines:

Core Argument

1. Definition: The error of judging a literary work's meaning by the author's stated or inferred intentions
2. Three Types of Evidence:
   • Internal: What's present in the work itself (valid)
   • External: Private journals, letters (invalid)
   • Intermediate: Author's explicit statements about the work (problematic)
3. Affective Fallacy: The related error of judging a work by its emotional effects on readers (developed in their 1949 follow-up essay)

Philosophical Underpinnings

The argument draws from several intellectual traditions:

• Formalism: Art exists as autonomous object separate from creator
• Objective Criticism: Echoes T.S. Eliot's "impersonal theory" of poetry
• Legal Reasoning: Parallel to interpreting laws based on text rather than legislators' intent
• Anti-Romanticism: Rejection of Wordsworth's "spontaneous overflow of feelings" model

Key Propositions

• "The design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a literary work"
• A poem "belongs to the public" upon publication - author loses special authority
• Biographical evidence creates "confusion between the poem and its origins"

Major Controversies

The intentional fallacy sparked enduring debates in literary theory:

1. Hermeneutic Circle: Can meaning ever be completely separated from authorial context?
2. Creative Process: Does excluding intention disregard how art is actually made?
3. Practical Limits: How strictly can (or should) critics avoid biographical information?

These questions later fueled reader-response theory and hermeneutic approaches.

"The poem is not the critic's own and not the author's (it is detached from the author at birth and goes about the world beyond his power to intend about it or control it). The poem belongs to the public." - Wimsatt & Beardsley

Practical Applications

The intentional fallacy shaped New Critical practice by:

• Justifying close readings without biographical research
• Shifting focus to textual paradoxes and ambiguities
• Establishing protocols for academic criticism (citation requirements for external evidence)

Case Study: Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn"

Wimsatt later demonstrated the principle by analyzing Keats' famous poem:

1. Showed how biographical readings (about Keats' engagement) distort the text
2. Argued the urn's message ("Beauty is truth") must be evaluated within the poem's own logic
3. Demonstrated how the poem's tensions exist independently of Keats' intentions

This became a model for intention-free criticism.

5. Cleanth Brooks: The Well Wrought Urn and New Critical Orthodoxy

Central Doctrines

Brooks' 1947 work became the definitive statement of New Critical principles through close readings of poems from Shakespeare to Yeats:

The Heresy of Paraphrase

Brooks' most famous concept argues that:

• A poem's meaning is inseparable from its form
• Any paraphrase is necessarily a distortion
• The poem's "total meaning" includes its tensions and contradictions

"The language of poetry is the language of paradox... The poet has no one term. Even if he had a polysyllabic technical term, the term would still not be the equivalent of the poem." - Cleanth Brooks

Poetry as Paradox

Brooks extends the heresy of paraphrase to argue that:

1. Poetic language fundamentally relies on paradox
2. Apparent contradictions reveal deeper truths
3. Irony becomes a structuring principle of complex poetry

Brooks' Analysis of Donne's "The Canonization"

Brooks demonstrates his method through a reading of Donne's poem:

• Identifies the central paradox: lovers become saints through profane love
• Traces how imagery and structure reinforce this paradox
• Shows how the poem resolves tensions through formal unity

This became a model for New Critical close readings.

6. Key New Critical Concepts: Expanded Definitions

Term	Theorist	Definition	Example	Significance
Close Reading	Richards/New Critics	Detailed analysis focusing on textual elements (imagery, metaphor, syntax)	Analyzing Shakespeare's sonnet rhyme schemes	Became standard literary classroom practice
Autotelic Art	New Critics	Art as self-contained, having purpose in itself (from Greek "auto" self + "telos" end)	Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn" as self-referential	Justified studying literature as independent discipline
Organic Unity	Brooks	All parts of poem contribute to unified whole; no "content" separable from "form"	Yeats' "Sailing to Byzantium" imagery and theme	Basis for evaluating poem's success
Intentional Fallacy	Wimsatt & Beardsley	Judging work by author's intent rather than textual evidence	Ignoring Shakespeare's biography when analyzing Hamlet	Established text as primary evidence

7. Practice Questions with Model Approaches

UGC-NET typically asks 2-3 questions per exam from this unit. Below are question types with suggested approaches:

Conceptual Questions

1. Explain Eliot's concept of "objective correlative" with examples.

   Approach: Define term → Quote Eliot → Give 2 examples (Hamlet's failure, Waste Land images) → Contrast with Romantic expression

2. How does Richards' Practical Criticism differ from biographical criticism?

   Approach: Richards' focus on text vs. biographical focus on author → Experimental method → Four meanings vs. life events

Comparative Questions

3. Compare Modernist impersonality with Romantic self-expression.

   Approach: Contrast Eliot's catalyst with Wordsworth's overflow → Historical contexts → Example poems from each period

Application Questions

4. Apply Brooks' concept of "heresy of paraphrase" to analyze a Shakespeare sonnet.

   Approach: Select Sonnet 18 → Show how paraphrase loses rhyme, meter, imagery → Demonstrate unity of form-content

8. Critical Analysis: New Criticism in Historical Perspective

Enduring Contributions

• Close Reading Methodology: Still fundamental to literary analysis across schools
• Textual Autonomy: Validated studying literature as independent discipline
• Pedagogical Tools: Created teachable, replicable methods for poetry analysis

Subsequent Challenges

• Structuralism/Poststructuralism: Challenged notion of stable textual meaning
• Cultural Studies: Rejected exclusion of historical/political contexts
• Reader-Response Theory: Critiqued neglect of reading process

New Criticism and UGC-NET Syllabus

This unit connects to several other areas in the exam:

• Literary Theory: Foundation for later 20th century theories
• Poetry Analysis: Essential for answering practical criticism questions
• History of Criticism: Represents key transition from biographical to textual focus

Exam Strategy: When asked about New Criticism, always:

1. Define key terms precisely
2. Cite major theorists
3. Provide literary examples
4. Compare with alternative approaches