New criticism is one of the most influential schools in modern British and American literary criticism. It originated in Britain in the 1920s, formed in the 1930s and became a major trend in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s. In the late 1950s, the new criticism gradually declined, but the semantic analysis of the established text advocated and practiced by the new criticism is still one of the basic methods of literary criticism, which has a far-reaching impact on today's literary criticism, especially poetry criticism. The word "new criticism" originated from the book "New Criticism" published by American literary critic Lanson 194 1, but the origin of this genre can be traced back to Eliot and Richards. Eliot can be regarded as a pioneer of new criticism. In the article Tradition and Personal Talent, he put forward an important argument-impersonal theory, which constitutes the cornerstone of the new critical literary theory. Eliot emphasized that criticism should shift from writers to works and from poets to poetry itself. It was Richards who provided the methodological basis for the new criticism. He drew people's attention to language by introducing semantics. There are several generations of critics in the new criticism. The early representatives were Hume in Britain and Pound in America. The second generation is Yan Buxun and Lansham, and the third generation is Wellek and Vincent. Together, they completed the theoretical system of new criticism. 1. Theoretical viewpoint of new criticism: literary ontology. This concept was put forward by Lanson, the main critic of the new criticism. He first applied the philosophical term "noumenon" to literary research. The new criticism holds that literary works are a complete multi-level artistic object and an independent and self-sufficient world, and literary works themselves are the source of literary activities. It has become the theoretical core of new criticism to study the characteristics of literature from the perspective of works themselves. Vincent Sartre and beardsley, who hold the same view, expounded their views from another angle, and therefore put forward two famous concepts: one is intentional fallacy and graphic fallacy. The second is the fallacy of feeling. Vincent Sartre and beardsley regard the exploration of the author's intention as fallacy, and their sharp edges point directly to positivism or romantic literary criticism. At the same time, they think it is a fallacy to judge the quality of a work by the radian of readers' emotional fluctuation. In the organic process of art constructed by writers, works and readers, the new criticism cut off the inextricable connection between the two ends without hesitation. In this sense, the new criticism is an authentic work ontology. Structural muscle theory. The idea was put forward by Ranson. In his view, structure and muscle are mutually corresponding and closely related concepts. The so-called structure is the logical clue and outline of a poem. It is a part of a poem that can be conveyed by prose, giving order and direction to a series of perceptual materials. Poetry always grasps the image of concrete things, which is the muscle of poetry. Poetry-muscle structure is an inseparable organic whole, just as the body and spirit of a living person are inseparable, so are the forms and contents of literary works. Context theory. Context theory is the core problem of semantic analysis of new criticism and the premise of understanding new criticism methods. This theory was put forward by Richards and later accepted and applied by New Criticism. Context refers to the relationship between a word, sentence or paragraph and its context, which determines the meaning of the word, sentence or paragraph. On this basis, Richards further expanded the scope of context. One is the discourse context when writing at that time, and the other refers to the "names representing a group of events that are reproduced at the same time" embodied in the text. The words here contain historical accumulation, and a word may imply a thrilling event or some strong emotion. It can be seen that the context theory of new criticism has a very broad vision, which embodies the new understanding of literary language by new criticism. Context constitutes a semantic field of meaning interaction, in which words are interwoven vertically and horizontally, producing rich meanings. 2. The terms commonly used in new criticism's poetry criticism are ambiguous. This term was introduced into New Criticism by Jan Busson, which refers to the compound meaning formed by the polysemy of literary language. In other words, meaning ambiguity refers to the phenomenon that a language unit (word, word) contains two or more meanings, and a sentence can be understood in many ways. It refers to the multiple effects produced by some rhetorical devices. Ambiguity of meaning was once considered as a major drawback of literary creation, but the new criticism regards it as a basic feature of poetic language, which makes it approximate to "rich" and "ingenious" meaning. The introduction and application of the term ambiguity will enable us to better explain the complexity and subtle vacillation of poetry from the perspective of linguistics, thus enriching the meaning of poetry. Irony. Brooks gave the most detailed explanation of irony. He defined irony as "the obvious distortion of statement by context". Context can reverse the ambiguity of a sentence, which is irony. All words in poetry are bound by context, and their meanings are also influenced by context, so there is a certain degree of irony. Irony can be expressed in language skills, such as deliberately speaking softly, but the listener knows its weight. Irony can also be expressed in the whole structure of the work. Nervous. Tension, originally a physical term, has been introduced into literary criticism and become an important concept of new criticism. The so-called tension refers to the relationship between the dictionary meaning and the meaning extension of words in poetry. The tension of poetry comes from the unity of all the meanings expressed by the extension and connotation of words. Poetry should be the balance of its dictionary meaning and extended meaning, and literal meaning and metaphorical meaning should coexist and be in a state of tension. If too much emphasis is placed on dictionary meaning, poetry will lose its poetry, and too much emphasis on metaphorical meaning will often lead to obscurity. Only in the mutual restraint and restriction between them, can the implied meaning play a role in the scope of understanding as much as possible, the literal meaning can keep its meaning consistent within the scope of suggestion as much as possible, and poetry can be rich in connotation and intriguing. Metaphor. Metaphor is a kind of metaphor and another important concept in the analysis of new critical poetry. Here, it is not only a rhetorical term, but also a basic element of poetry. Brooks once said: "We can sum up the skills of modern poetry in one sentence: rediscover metaphors and make full use of them." Richards divides metaphor into two parts, vehicle and theme. The former is a concrete image, and the latter is an abstract meaning extended from the image. Generally speaking, simile in metaphor is the direct explanation of the vehicle to the tenor, while metaphor requires the vehicle and tenor to be "distant" and "heterogeneous". 3. The "close reading method" of new criticism. The close reading method of new criticism is not an impressionistic criticism of egoism, but a "careful interpretation", which is a critical way to analyze and interpret works in detail. In this kind of criticism, the critic seems to be reading every word with a magnifying glass, capturing hints, hints and associations in literary words and phrases. The operation process is roughly divided into the following three steps: first, understand the meaning, then understand the context, and finally grasp the rhetorical characteristics. New criticism began to decline in the late 1950s, but some basic arguments and methods of new criticism left indelible marks on American literary criticism and literary teaching methods. Some people say that if the new criticism dies, it will die like a formidable father. The new criticism has left some generally accepted concepts and concepts for contemporary literary criticism.
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