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On Organic Unity and Theme

So what did great literature mean for the new critics, and what was their criteria?

New Criticism judged works based on what they perceived to be their “organic unity” and whether they had a “theme of universal significance”. In fact, organic unity meant that all of the elements of the story and text worked together to contribute to the theme, which is the complete meaning of a text. Crudely put, the theme is the ‘moral of the story’. But this quality, the quality of order in the form of unity, had to be balanced out by the quality of complexity, which is how you could tell if a work was really great or just kinda good. Great works used a number of linguistic devises that made the story more real, more true-to-life.

These devices are :

irony / a statement or event undermined by the context in which it occurs, or the inclusion of varying perspectives on the same character or event, which in some way undermine each other.

paradox/ a contrasting statement

ambiguity / a word, image or event that generates 2 or more different meanings

tension/ linking together of opposites, or the integration of the abstract(the universal) and the concrete, also known as concrete universals.

figurative language, such as images, metaphors, symbols and similes.

Tension is also created by opposing images or concepts that constitute the other linguistic devices, so they overlap a lot. And order exists if all of these are in line with, and serve, the overarching theme.

An organic salute,

Aleks

#litarature #literary criticism #new critics #linguistic devices

I can’t say I agree with the New Critics in general, but I can confess that when I fall in love with a story, it almost always does posses deep, inherent tensions and ambiguities. Perhaps because they vibrate with the same unease that exists in our own lives.

#literature #literary criticism #sketchnotes #new critics #visualization

'The tendency of science is necessarily to stabilize terms, to freeze them into strict denotations; the poet's tendency is by contrast disruptive. The terms are continually modifying each other, and thus violating their dictionary meanings.'

Cleanth Brooks, The Language of Paradox

#literary theory #poetry #science #new critics

Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.

D.H. Lawrence, 1924

#quotes #tale #artist #Lawrence #new critics

Commitment to a free ballon

what Cleanth Brooks

said of the letting go of logical structures in poetic criticism (and poetry itself), while believing in the whole of the text in and of itself. "The Well Wrought Urn" has some other gems, whether or not you disbelieve/deconstruct/POSTstructural-ize:

***[The poet] is rather [ than "simply trying to spice up...the old state stockpot",] giving us an insight which preserves the unity of experience and which, at its higher and more serious levels, triumphs over the apparently contradictory and conflicting elements of experience by unifying them into a new pattern.

***The poem, if it be a true poem, is a simulacrum of reality--in this sense, at least it is an "imitation"--by being an experience rather than any mere statement about experience or any mere abstraction from experience.

***Donne as a poet is fighting the devil with fire

#New Critics #Cleanth Brooks #The Well Wrought Urn #formalism

the Norton anthology of theory and criticism: Formalism

Formalism rose to prominence in the early 20th century.defined in opposition to subjectivist theories of literature such as Romanticism, which were perceived to be solipsistic and relativistic.

– not interested in the feelings of poets

– not interested in the responses of readers

– not interested in representations of "reality"

instead formalism attends to artistic structure and form.

the two best-known schools are:

Anglo-American new criticism

Russian formalism

focus on the literary object. - separating criticism from the study of sources, biography, social and historical context, politics and other "extrinsic" matters.

advocates "close reading" but avoids paraphrase and thematic statements. examining the complex stylistic orchestrations that compose poetry.

new critics – seek a set of organic relationships of literary element is, such as images, symbols, troops, features and genre and style, settings, tones. overall unity often depends on ambiguity, Paradox, irony.

Kant – "purposive nurse without purpose" and Coleridge's "reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities" – is seen as the defining feature of poetry.

seeks to distinguish the literary from the ordinary use of language found in everyday speech, journalism, and scientific writing where direct communication is the key element.

Russian formalist critics such as Roman Jakobson and Boris Eichenbaum distinguish between the literary and the nonliterary. They view literature as a verbal art rather than a 'reflection of reality' or an expression of emotions. separating criticism from psychology, sociology and intellectual history they focus on the distinguishing features of literature - what most separates literature from other modes of discourse is that it draws attention to its own medium – a complex texture of formal devices and strategies. including versification, style, narrative structure.

new critics – study the convergence of elements in the literary structure.

Russian formalist – examine the creative deviation of elements from the background of literary norms and convention.

the importance of formalism cannot be understated because it is the dominant mode of modern criticism - against which much later theory defines itself.

#Formalism #new critics #Kant #Coleridge #Russian formalist #Roman Jakobson #Boris Eichenbaum