Criticism

Amita C. Jani
Roll no. : 11
SEM – II
Paper no : E-C-203
Year – 2011
Topic: Criticism

Submitted to Dr. Dilip Barad
Department of English,
Bhavnagar University.

What is new criticism?

The new criticism is a type of formalist literary criticism that reached its height during the 1940s and 1950 and that received its name from John Crowe Rans Son’s 1941 book The New Criticism. New critics treat a work of literature as if it were a self-contained, self-referential object. Rather than basing their interpretations of a text on the reader’s response, the author’s stated intensions or parallels between the text and historical contexts (such as author’s life). New critics perform a close reading concentrating on the relationship within the text that gives it its own distinctive character or form. New critics emphasize that the structure of a work should not be divorced from meaning viewing the two as constituting a quasi-organic unity. Special attention is paid to repetition, particularly of image or symbols but also of sound affects and rhythms in poetry. New critics especially appreciated the use of literary devices, such a irony to achieve a balance or reconciliation between dissimilar, even confliction elements in a text.

Because it stressed close textual analysis and viewing the text as a carefully crafted, orderly object containing formal observable patterns, the new criticism has sometimes been called an “objective” approach to literature. New critics are more likely than certain other critics to believe and say that the meaning of a text can be known objectively. For instance, reader response either of each reader’s experience or of the norms of that governs or particular interpretive community and deconstructors argue that texts mean opposite things at the same time.    

The foundation of the new criticism were laid in books and essays written during the 1920s and 1930s by I.A. Richards (practical criticism, 1929), William Empson (seven types of ambiguity, 1930) and I.S. Eliot (The function of criticism, 1933). The  approach was significantly developed later, however, by a group of American poets and critics, including R.P. Blackmar, Cleanth Brooks, John Penn Warren and William K. Winsatt. Although we associate the new criticism with the certain principles and terms such as affective fallacy (The notion that the reader’s response is relevant to the meaning of a work) and intentional fallacy (The notion that the author’s intension determines the work’s meaning) – the new critics were trying to make a cultural statement rather than to establish a critical doymer. Generally southern religious and culturally conservative they advocated the inherent value of literary works (particularly of literary works regarded as beautiful art objects) because they were sick of the growing ugliness of modern life and contemporary events. Some recent theorists even link the rising popularity after world war-II of the new criticism (and other types of formalist literary criticism such as the Chicago School) to American isolationism. These critics tend to view the formalist tendency to isolate literature from biography and history as symptomatic of American fatigue with wider involvements. Whatever the source of the new criticism’s popularity, its practitioners and the textbooks they wrote were so infrequent in American academia that the approach became standard in college and even high school.

New criticism : Application on another paradise lost : The Hindu way

-         Meena Kandasamy

Modern times have given rise to new literary forms or we should say modification are seen in this forms. We have writers like Sujata Bhatt, Rachana Joshi, Pravin Gadhavi, Meena Kandasamy who have certainly enriched our literary heritage through their creations but they have absaitained from following the tradition like sheep. Meena Kandasamy “a flowering talent” admits that her poetry is her vehicle for cross fertilizing her views on “Indian culture and so called socio-cultured values”. It is of course statement that most of these writers write poetry for propagating their attitudes towards the happening in the society.

Another Paradise Lost : The Hindu way has a remarkable beginning before the reader come across the first and the only name in the first line, we come across one determine and two adjectives “One sleepy summer afternoon”.

Sleepy – she is half-awaken. It shows abrupt beginning of the poem and then “boring afternoon” is transferred epithet. The narrator instead of saying that she is sleeping, she placed that adjective sleepy before the word afternoon by this means she establishes that she was sleepy because it was summer – (adjective) afternoon. The determiner plays a crucial role by making it very clear that for the narrator the incident that took place is more important than the time. The reader should be notice the Olever used of the world sleepy which can not the half awake state of the narrator’s mind.

“One Sleepy Summer Afternoon”

Sleepy summer – transferred epithet

Sleepy – adjective

A Summer – adjective

The second line brings in the pronoun “I” for the narrator. The verb after the pronoun “I”, prepare us to read or view the whole poem (incident) from her angle. Her angle is that of a witness.  The reason behind the adopting this angle is that the narrator simply narrates the incidents without getting verbose. Sharing the characteristics with the modern writers, she does not waste time in setting the points.

If we use a word from film criticism and say that the poem starts with her bang. The place were the snake is lying is an unusual place and it raises our interest level in the poem. Simultaneously the reader senses that the snake is a personified metaphor. Here the Frankners and her habit of providing minute details establish her as witness. The poem is unusually long but it is sweep in action and quicking in place like the narrators temperaments and attitude which is quick to react against social evils or cultural practices. The first stanza is the cause and the second stanza is the effect of the cause.

The  second stanza of the poem continues the narration in the set direction or this direction is the set in the first stanza. It looks outcome of the first stanza – the law of cause and effect. The natural mode of narration, sweetness of action and quickness in pace are conspicuously sustain here. Both the stanzas are the examples of Meena’s technical perfection. The placement of the punctuation marks exhibits existent in narrating this story to her readers cum listeners. It is her technical perfection that the reader communicates with her by raising questions nonverbally.

The third stanza begins with an imperative without “please, would you or could you” because the snake knows the narrator is going to attack with acid. The use of the word “hissed” illustrates or exemplifies fun. A snake hisses but it must be borne in mind that there the snake is a personified metaphor so where it hissed, it expresses disapproval, the reader can imagine is paused, since the snake starts interacting in pure Tamil! Tamil is the language in which narrator prays and writes. It is on of the defending factors of her identity. Again her reader is hunted with the same question – does the snake have its own physical existence or it is the narrator’s inner voice??  The view that the snake is her inner voice, the snake says that it is exile. This is reminds the reader banished, marginalized, importantly outcaste. The term, the reader will notice connects him with the term exile, with this a little bit of fog is cleared and the picture that we have before use is that of a person having diasporic feeling in his own country.

Fourth stanza moves the discussion further. The snake twists and we come to know that it is losing its “hair balding”. What really surprises us is bolding has been linked with none other than Salman Rusdie’s blindly fallow, because Rusdie and controversy are twists. And now we realize that the narrator has taken up controversy in homeland.

In the fifth stanza, the very same snake found to be discoursing exhorting and preaching to the narrator about living in detachment. No wonder our Holy Scriptures are target and the philosophy if “Nishkam”, “Aliptbhav” is ridiculed. In short the philosophy of self-abnegation is mocked of at the next sentence that fellows are extremely sardonic.

“The perfection of life is when you do not know the difference between yielding and resisting”

But the journey does not halt here the same snake who us the voice of the marginalized people produces an explanation of Holy Scriptures. “Rebirth” and “Reincarnation” has been our old tool with which we have created the web set stories and explanation in which the marginalized have been struck for centuries. When the marginalized snake is speaking the narrator feels tempted to take notes. It simply means controversies have been calls which have always pushed forward the writer’s locomotive of creativity still as a twist is an expected factor in her poems, she declares, “I began arguing” this exhibits that she knows the difference between yielding and resistance.

In this poem, in short, two paradise are compared and we find that in Milton’s Paradise Lost, Satan is against God but in this Paradise Lost men is against men. If we applied new criticism in this poem, main one question arise in our mind that why she choose snake? Because snake is a “Shudra Creature” and according to our myth snake or animal also divider. In this poem we find commonness between snake and narrator because both are from “Shudra” or from lower class community. Here snake challenged the authorities. In this poem she shows that “the snake ruled twelve thousand years, it is impossible” so she is making on our scriptures or myth or our belief system. Even criticism exists in haven also or she said why Karma decide everything... and she said that nobody looks at our world, what is more important here Karma or legality or honesty? Or Karma is just a bunkum means a foolish thing that the poet asked question like what is the criteria of our work? And she said about snake that snake is well known but this God plotted against him and they are get together and decided that snake may creates problems so decided to thrown him outside and he raised a question so her turn into snake. So here we find power struggle mean who ever are in the power they govern the others. Same way Shudra also kept outside, the main point is cast politics here, this snake is dissatisfied because his questions are not heard or answered so he was banished from paradise. In this poem “I” refers the whole Dalit community and this was the different phrase of Paradise Lost and it is very significant that Milton’s Paradise Lost. So it signifies that she did not violate any social rules and this case no forbidden food or this is natural law and she is not talking about women but just doing for society. This poem is fusion of Myth and Social satire and she got a story from snake or now she respects the snake or Dalit or we can say that it was means a whole poem was just her inner conflict because she was going to take same topic or decided to write about the same topic or in this way as a Dalit woman she has going to free the problems by other caste and in this way the conflict about where is rationality? No where we found it…

Conclusion :

After applying the new criticism in Meena Kandasamy’s Another Paradise Lost : The Hindu Way… we find that the new criticism stresses close attention to the internal characteristics of the text itself. Or the interpretation of a text shows that there aspects serve to support the structure of meaning within the text. New critics privileged poetry over other forms of literary expression because it shows the poem as the purest exemplification of the literary values which they upheld so new criticism aims at finding one “correct” reading, it also ignores the ambiguity of language and the active nature of the perception of meaning. New criticism, new critics treat a work of literature as if it were self-contained. They do not consider reader’s response, author’s intensions or historical and cultural contexts. New criticism performs a close reading of the text and believes that meaning of the text should not be examined separately.