Formalism
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Transcript of Formalism
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Formalist Approaches
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Formalist ApproachesBroadly: concerned exclusively with the
text in isolation from the world, author, or reader
Specifically: Russian Formalism focused on
literariness of texts, defamiliarization, material & device, story & plot, narrative voice
New Criticism focused on the text as an object that can be analyzed independent of author, world, or reader
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New Criticism: The Quest for “Text-centricity”
• formalist school from 1920 – 1960• methodology applied to yield single, correct
“hidden meaning” of literary texts• “close readings” focused on literary devices
• looked at language-denotation, connotation, form, figures, import, structure.
• valued complexity, oppositions, irony, paradox
• emphasized objectivity in literary criticism• looks to language denotation, connotation, form,
figures, structure• asks for educated audience/“willing students”
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Precursors
• Aristotle focused on elements w/ which a work is composed.
• Romantics stressed organic unity from imagination’s “esemplastic” power.
• Poe extolled the “singleness of effect” in poetry & fiction.
• James made the same case for fiction as “organic form.”
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Other Names
• Aesthetic criticism • Textual criticism• Ontological criticism• Modernism• Formalism • Practical criticism
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Practitioners of New Criticism
British: I. A. Richards,William Empson,
F.R. Leavis
American: W.K. Wimsatt, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, Richard Blackmur,
Cleanth Brooks, John Crowe Ransom
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Origins in early 1900s
“honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry” (Eliot, Selected Essays 17).
Strove for scientific objectivity but of a special nature because words enable multiple perspectives.
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Major Texts of New Criticism
I.A. Richards The Principles of Literary Criticism, Practical Criticism (1920s)The Fugitives & Southern Agrarians formed
John Crowe Ransom’s The New Criticism (1941): poems as a concrete entity like any other art object
Cleanth Brooks’ The Well Wrought Urn (1947):
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Central Argument
The poem is the raison d’etre.• to place poet or culture above the
literary expression is to move away from essential unity of poem.
• employing biography, history or affect is an inherently vague and unreliable basis for analysis.
• objective analysis is far more inclusive and forgiving methodology.
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“The Heresy of Paraphrase”Cleanth Brooks, 1947
• from The Well Wrought Urn--treatment of ten poems spanning historical /canonical record from Shakespeare to Yeats.
• employs “close-reading” techniques to see “what the masterpieces had in common” (1354)
• Poems chosen for Brooks• added metaphysical (Donne) and
modern (Yeats)
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William K. Wimsatt, Jr. Monroe C. Beardsley (1907-75) (1915-85)
• Born-Washington, D.C.
• Georgetown, Ph.D. Yale
• Taught @ Yale-1939• Known for works on
Samuel Johnson• Literary Criticism:
• The Verbal Icon• w/Cleanth Brooks• The Intentional
Fallacy• The Affective
Fallacy
• Born-Connecticut• Ph.D. Yale, briefly in
Philosophy dept.• Mt. Holyoke, 1944• Taught literary
criticism Swarthmore and Temple
• Aesthetics and Philosophy
• Joint w/ Wimsatt• The Intentional
Fallacy• The Affective
Fallacy
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What is “Paraphrase”?
The attempt to evaluate a poem by presenting a proposition about the poem’s meaning apart from its form; i.e. giving a “prose-sense” to the poem.
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Central Argument• Structure : whole is greater than
sum of parts• Rational meaning and Emotive
meaning• Import• Suggestion
• Reduction of “meaning” • lowest common denominator
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• “all such formulations lead away from the center of the poem—not toward it…”
• Paraphrase strips poem of poetic power• “form and content, or content and
medium, are inseparable.”(1357)
• Longinus—remark on Euripides (154) *
Problems inherent…
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Two other theoretical errors…
• “Intentionalism”-• “Affectionionalism”- *
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The Intentional Fallacy• Published 1946• Objective literary criticism
defended• Criticism hampered by use of
biography or “genealogy” to evaluate the effectiveness of poetry
• Intentionalists tend to move away from the poem
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What is the Intentional Fallacy?
• A confusion between the poem and its origins (genealogy-Genetic Fallacy)• Starts with the “causes” and ends in
“biography and relativism” (1388)
• Intention: “design or plan in author's mind” (1375)
• “Intention” not stable standard of literary criticism:• unavailable• undesirable
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Unavailable Intention
• Work is “detached from the author at birth” (1376)
• Echoes Jean-Paul Sartre• Unduly extends the author’s creative
freedom.
• Completed work belongs to the public and to their interpretations and evaluations
• Child/Parent Analogy *
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Undesirable Intention• Work measured against something
“outside of the author” (1381)
• “author psychology” (1381).
• Attractive from an historical or biographical perspective
• W & B warn against confusing “personal and poetic studies”
• “Critical inquiries are not settled by consulting the oracle”(1387)
• Settling a bet: Eliot
• Criticism must depend on recognition of difference• Internal vs. external sources of evidence of
meaning
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Internal vs. External Evidence• Internal evidence of meaning
discovered through “the semantics and syntax of a poem, through grammars, dictionaries, and all the literature which is the source of dictionaries, [and] in general through all that makes a language and culture” (1381)
• External evidence of meaning consists of “revelations about how or why the poet wrote the poem” (1381)
• One moves toward poem, one moves away
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Essence of Objective Critical Literary Analysis
Successful works contain all necessary and relevant information to find meaning• Example: Derek Walcott's “Ruins of a
Great House”
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“The Affective Fallacy”
• Published in 1949• Companion article to “The Intentional
Fallacy”• Recount history and results of
psychological, emotion-driven conception of literary analysis
• Focus on role and function of critic• Critic is teacher or explicator of meaning• Arnoldian “personal fallacy”
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What is the Affective Fallacy?
Confusing the POEM with its RESULTS
i.e. what a poem is with what a poem does
But what does that mean?How does that represent a fallacy?
*
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Affective Critics:Shifting the Focus
• Critics engaged in Affective Theory will• use emotional response as evaluative
standard• subjugate poem to subjective emotional
response,• Critic/reader the actual object of cognitive
focus.
• differentiate cognitive effects and emotive affects
• In accounting for affect, reader must re-engage text
• E.g. Donne’s “The Canonization”*
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SummaryThe poem is the raison d’etre.
• To place poet or culture above literary expression is to move away from essential unity of poem.
• Employing biography, history or affect is an inherently vague and unreliable basis for analysis.
• Objective analysis is far more inclusive and forgiving methodology.