First of all, let's look at the fallacy of intentionality-that is, taking the poet's creative intention as the critical criterion for evaluating poetry. Wimsatt thinks this is a fallacy, because it equates the cause and process of poetry creation with poetry itself, which will lead to biographical criticism and relativism. As a literary work itself is an independent existence, there is no need to look for creative intention outside the work as an evaluation criterion.
Secondly, look at the emotional fallacy, that is, to evaluate poetry with its psychological effect as a criterion. Wimsatt thinks this is also a fallacy, which will lead to impressionism and relativism.
No matter what kind of fallacy, it involves psychological factors. From this perspective, Wimsatt is aimed at the psychology in Richards' theory. By criticizing the theory of intention and the theory of feeling, Wilmsart emphasizes the complete independence of the work itself, which has nothing to do with the psychology of the author and readers. Compared with romantic literary theory, it is of positive significance to highlight the work itself. But at the same time, Weimar also separated the relationship between his works and the whole social and historical environment, and between the author and the reader, making poetry only a formal style skill, which went to one-sided and extreme.
Let's take a look at Wimsatt's "concrete universality". He regards literary works as a kind of "concrete general thing" from the dialectical relationship between concreteness and universality, individuality and generality. The demonstration process is as follows:
1. Language directly describes not individuals, but some special generalization, which determines the universality of literary works. So how do literary works materialize? Depends on the details. The strength of details does not come from what the details directly express, but from what is implied by the special combination of details, which makes literary works special on the basis of generality.
2. Not only the works have concrete universality, but also the characters in the works have concrete universality. The characters in the works must first have the general character, which is the universality of the characters. At the same time, as an artistic image, the character image must be three-dimensional and full to live. According to the principle of unity, the author needs to arrange the multi-faceted characteristics in an orderly way, so that the quality of the characters can form an organic and unified whole, thus becoming a vivid and unique artistic image, which is the concreteness of the characters' images.
Based on the dialectical understanding of the structure and characters in his works, Winsatt criticized Lanson's frame-muscle theory.
Finally, let's take a look at Vimsart's study of metaphor. Brooks once commented on the skills of modern poetry in one sentence: rediscovering and making full use of metaphor. Wimsatt promotes the understanding of metaphor.
1. Poets need metaphor because metaphor is a kind of "concrete abstraction". The similarity between metaphor and vehicle will produce a generalized abstract class. For a class, there is never a name, and it can only be understood through metaphor.
2. The effect of metaphor depends on the similarity between the tenor and the vehicle. The farther apart the poles are, the stronger this effect is.
3. The mechanism of metaphor lies not only in the similarity between tenor and vehicle, but also in their opposition.
4. Metaphor is inseparable from context. If a metaphor has the same meaning everywhere, it will lose its vitality.
Weimar Sartre's understanding of the structure and metaphor of his works is dialectical, but his fallacy separates the relationship between his works and the author, readers and social history, which indicates that the new criticism will decline because of its extreme nature.