When did John Crowe Ransom publish the book that named New Criticism?
John Crowe Ransom published The New Criticism in 1941. This volume gave the movement its name and signaled a break from older methods of literary study.
Questions about New Criticism
Short answers, pulled from the story.
Who were the key figures associated with developing New Criticism at Kenyon College?
Allen Tate, Cleanth Brooks, and Robert Penn Warren studied under John Crowe Ransom at Kenyon College during the early twentieth century. These three Southerners developed the aesthetics later known as New Criticism.
What specific essays did W K Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley publish to define New Criticism in 1946?
W K Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley published The Intentional Fallacy and The Affective Fallacy in 1946. Their work became central to the movement's identity by arguing against authorial intention and reader response.
During which decades was New Criticism dominant in American universities before structuralism challenged it?
The heyday of New Criticism spanned the Cold War decades between 1950 and the mid-seventies. Methods predominated in American universities until structuralism challenged them in the 1960s.
Why do feminist theory and post-colonial theory reject New Criticism according to critics like Terence Hawkes?
Critics allege that New Critics treated texts as autonomous and divorced from historical context. Terence Hawkes claimed the method assumed stable forms rather than unconscious processes of signification, while other theories oppose it for ignoring sexual identity and political bias.