New Criticism

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New Criticism

• Some More Love Poems

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Central Questions

• How do we read a poem/text? What do we look for,
  the authors intention, our own psychological
  projection, the meaning conveyed through both
  form and content, or the ways a text respond to
  its time?
• What are the values in reading literature? Is it
  the finest example of culture?
• What is culture? How is it related to our daily
  life? Can we resist commercial culture through
  cultivating our artistic sensibility? Do you
  feel nostalgic about a certain historical
  period?
• Are we ultimately free? Is our subjectivity
  unified or fragmentary?

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Outline
Literature as a profession a Religion and the
only solution to worldly chaos.

• Key Words
• Matthew Arnold Culture vs. Anarchy
• T. S. Eliot Literary values defined
• New Criticism organicism methods
• Victorian love poems in the context
• of the Victorian vs.
• Modern Views of Love

from idealism repression to disunity and
franker views of the body and desire)
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Key Words

• Hellenism vs. Philistinism (Arnold) (Bertens 2-5)
• Dissociation of Sensibility Objective
  Correlative (Eliot) (Bertens 12-13)
• Intentional Fallacy Affective Fallacy Heresy of
  Paraphrase (New Critics) (Bertens 22-23)
• Liberal Humanism (Bertens 6)

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M. Arnold Hellenism vs. Philistinism

• Culture the best that has been thought and
  said
• Hellenism Greek culture as an example? timeless
  and universal
• Intellectual refinement and sensibility,
  disinterestedness, spiritual activity

• Anarchy caused by capitalism and middle-class
  Protestantism.
• Philistinism self-centered, materialistic

Bertens 2-5
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Arnold (2) Arts Timelessness Liberal Humanism

• The ultimate autonomy and self-sufficiency of
  the subject (Bertens 6) ? we are essentially
  free.
• Likewise, literature, or its universal values, is
  not constrained by its time and space.
• Good questions on p. 8

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objective correlative ????? (T.S. Eliot)

• An external object used to convey the writers
  feeling, which is elevated to a universal level
  in writing so that the same feelings can be
  evoked in the reader.
• The only way of expressing emotion in the form
  of art is by finding an objective correlative
  in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a
  chain of events which shall be the formula of
  that particular emotion such that when the
  external facts, which must terminate in sensory
  experience, are given, the emotion is immediately
  evoked. (Hamlet and His Problems)

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objective correlative e.g. ????? (T.S. Eliot)

• e.g. Images of coldness in Hardys Neutral
  Tones
• e.g. . . . the sun was white, as though chidden
  of God
• The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
• Let us go then, you and I,
• When the evening is spread out against the sky
• Like a patient etherized(????) upon a table
• (? Are they objective or subjective?)

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T. S. Eliot his Value Judgment

• dislikes PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY and Tennyson
• e.g. Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
• I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! (ODE TO
  THE WEST WIND )
• Favors metaphysical poetry, which unites
  emotions and wits.
• What comes after 17th century poetry is a
  dissociation of sensibility. ? finds organic
  unity in literature

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New Criticism Major Assumptions (Bertens
21-23 )

• A poem is an autonomy (????), its meanings
  decided by itself alone, but not by the authors
  intention or the readers emotional responses to
  it.
• Intentional Fallacy
  (????),
• Affective Fallacy (????)
• Poetry offers a different kind of truth (poetic
  truth) than science, conveyed through its dense
  language which cannot be translated.
• Heresy of Paraphrase

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Major Assumptions Textual Autonomy

• the poets mind as a catalyst (??)

Experience, objective correlatives
CO2???? ????
Organic whole
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New Criticism Major Assumption (2) organic
wholeness

• organic unity
• all of its elements (form and content, poetic
  elements, tensions) form a single unified
  effect.
• all parts of a poem are interrelated and
  interconnected, with each part reflecting and
  helping to support the poem's central idea.
  ...allows for the harmonization of conflicting
  ideas, feelings, and attitudes, ...

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New Criticism Methodology

• New Criticisms synonyms objective criticism,
  practical criticism, textual criticism, close
  reading
• the "text and the text alone" approach

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New Criticism on Poetry (Bressler 44 - 45)

• 1. Pay close attention to the texts diction its
  meanings (connotation and denotation) and even
  its etymological roots.
• 2. Study the poetic elements closely.
• e.g.??(prosody)?????(?????????????)
• 3. Search for structure and patterns e.g.
  oppositions in the text (paradox, ambiguity,
  irony)
• 4. From Parts to an Organic Wholeness

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New Criticism Methodology (1) Poetry
Whole Themes pattern, tension, ambiguities,
paradox, contradictions

• Parts
• Denotations, connotations
• and etymological roots
• Allusions
• Prosody
• Relationships
• among
• the various elements

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New Criticism Methodology (1) Narrative
Whole Themes pattern, tension, ambiguities,
paradox, contradictions

• Parts
• Point of view,
• dialogue,
• setting,
• Plot
• Characterization
• Relationships
• among
• the various elements

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Victorian love poemsin the context of the
Victorian vs. Modern Views of Love

• A Womans Desire EBB
• Ending of love Barbara Allen
• A Mans Desire for Possession

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Female Desire

• Nude With a Dog 1861-61 (later dated 1868)
• Gustave Courbet

Innocence, implied sexuality
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Female Desire
Egon Schiele (Austria 1890 - 1918)

KNEELING NUDE, 1918 http//www.donagrafik.com/WUK_
KATALOG/HTML/31_e.html
Nu a la pantoufle a carreaux (1917)
http//www.pyb.com.au/ptcds/pcres/focus/schiele.ht
m
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E. B. Browning

• While Robert Browning is famous for being a
  poet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning is famous for
  being a poet with a romantic life story (Beard
  67)
• Her life
• Threatened with lung disease, lived in a darkened
  room with few visitors (after her brothers death
  by drowning).
• Married before elopement. (still following the
  Victorian moral codes)
• Her elopement with Browning cured her
  invalidism.

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E. B. Browning (2) Critical Reception of EBB as
a poet

• Aurara Leigh Aurora, who aspires to be a poet,
  is courted with a marriage proposal by her cousin
  Romney. Rejecting his offer she proclaims her own
  vocation'.
• Victorians saw her as a major poet, good enough
  to be considered for laureatship
• Later critics see her as an adjunct to her
  husband
• Contemporary feminists read her work as
  Victorian feminist writings

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Her sonnets

• Different from the Renaissance sonnets because
  she talks mostly about her own love (and doubts),
  but not her lover.

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Her sonnets Questions

• What are the main ideas of Sonnet 26 and 43?
• Are they good poems from the standard of New
  Criticism?
• What do you think about her modes of love?
• Note sonnet forms
• English (Shakespearean) sonnet Quartrain (abab
  cdcd efef) couplet (gg)
• Italian (Petrarchan) Octave (abbaabba ) and
  Sestet (cdecde, cdccdc, or cdedce.)

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Sonnet forms

• Italian two parts -- "The octave bears the
  burden a doubt, a problem, a reflection, a
  query, an historical statement, a cry of
  indignation or desire, a Vision of the ideal. The
  sestet eases the load, resolves the problem or
  doubt, answers the query, solaces the yearning,
  realizes the vision.
• English the final couplet -- a commentary on the
  foregoing, an epigrammatic close. (source
  http//www.english.upenn.edu/afilreis/88/sonnet.h
  tml )

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Sonnet 43

• Thesis The speaker expresses both through form
  and content how love is both boundless and
  limited.
• Form
• Italian, but with only 4 rhymes intertwining
  rhymes
• Repetition of words
• Emotional, long lines not limited by the form
  breaks in the middle of two lines
• Meaning
• Paradox between uncountable love and countable
  ways
• between boundless love and finality of life.
  (freely, purely vs. loss and death)
• between the spiritual and eternal (open or long
  vowels) and the everyday life (short and stressed
  syllables).

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Sonnet 26

• Thesis
• Form
• two part (before-after) structure broken by
  your arrival.
• Nasal sounds associated with visions, and
  explosives with the lover.
• Content
• Personification visions as they
• Ambiguities wants, Gods gifts what
  overcame her with satisfaction?

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E. B. Browning (3) love desire

• Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850)
• The physical sources of desire is presented with
  metaphors (Kern 91-92)
• She hears footsteps of the soul and waits with
  trembling knees.
• The hand of love is soft and warm and brings
  souls to touch
• Her heart opens wide to fold within the wet
  wings of thy dove
• Her own pulse and her beloveds beat double

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E. B. Browning (3) desire

• Exchange of a lock of hair
• R. Browning Give me . . . so much of youall
  precious that you areas may be given in a lock
  of your hairI will live and die with it.
• Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850)
• . . .from my poets forehead to my heart . . .
• I lay the gift where nothing hindereth
• Here on my heart, as on thy brow, to lack
• No natural heat till mine grows cold in
  death. (Sonnet 19 qtd Kern 345)

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V. Ending
The lovers composed, with reasons (the book)
clearly given.

• Arthur Hughes (1832-1915) Aurora Leigh's
  Dismissal of Romney- (The Tryst) 1860
  http//freespace.virgin.net/k.peart/Victorian/hugh
  eslove.htm

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M. Ending

Edward Munch Ashes (1894)
Both lovers frustrated, in a mess.
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Ending in conflict

• While the Victorian were acutely aware of
  conflict, they were less willing than the moderns
  to see it as intrinsic to love or as having a
  constitutive function. In art they displaced
  conflict onto fictitious characters, often onto
  femme fatales in distant, ancient, or imaginary
  places. (Kern 373)
• The other solution joining in death. (sometimes
  quite liteterally e.g. Wuthering Heights Dante
  Gabriel Rossetti)

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Barbara Allen

• Ballad
• brevity (omission of some plot),
• matter-of-fact tone
• repetition with variation
• Why do you think Barbara Allen rejects the young
  man? And why does she die?
• How is the young man presented?
• How does the form of ballad adds depths to this
  ballad?

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Barbara Allen

• Thesis Though apparently about unrequited love
  and reunion after death, Barbaras motivation in
  refusing the young man or death is not clear.
• Form
• Repetition slowly Goodbye
• the turning point one line said by Barbara to
  Grove
• External actions (words) described but not inner
  feelings
• Content
• Why does she know that he is dying?
• What type of sorrow does she die of?
• dying ??soft and narrow bed

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Barbara Allen another version, misunderstanding

• 4. "Don't you remember the other day
• When you were in the tavern,
• I toasted all the ladies there
• And slighted Barbara Allen?"
• 5. "O yes, I remember the other day
• When we were in the Tavern,
• I toasted all the ladies there,
• Gave my love to Barbara Allen."
• 9. . . .Sweet William died for me today,
• I'll die for him tomorrow."
• 11. . . . And out of hers, a briar.
  

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Different musical versions

• http//entertainment.msn.com/Song/?song1256807
  Barbara Allen on Angel Clare by Art Garfunkel
• The same music
• Another version

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Male Desire
Jean-Leon Gerome (1824-1904) (French) "Phryne
before the Areopagus 1861 http//www.kingsgaller
ies.com/1024x768/galleries/gerome/expanded/picture
-12.htm
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Male Desire

S. Dali The Great Masturbator 1929
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Male Desire in Porphyrias Lover

• Dramatic Monologue elements
• situation, who, where, when, and why
• the listener,
• Can you analyze the working of this speakers
  mind? Is he sane or insane? Where do you see
  the clues?
• How is Porphyria presented?

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Male Desire in Porphyrias Lover

• Thesis The speaker, with his deranged mind,
  solves all the conflicts in Porphyria, but not
  his desire to control and be controlled.
• Form
• one continuous speech without stanza divisions
• Content
• The lover deranged and disturbed
• Porphyria active, pleading, in conflict
• Final attempt at getting a pure and eternal love.
  
• Paradoxes speaker, both passive and active P
  alive after death
• Final appeal to God

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Reference

• Literary Theory The Basics. Hans Bertens. NY
  Routledge, 2001.
• Literary Criticism An Introduction to Theory and
  Practice. 2nd Ed. (Bressler, Charles E.
  Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey Prentice Hall,
  1999.)
• TEXTS AND CONTEXTS - INTRODUCING LITERATURE AND
  LANGUAGE STUDY. Adrian Beard. Routledge, 2001.
• The Culture of Love Victorians to Moderns.
  Stephen Kern. Harvard UP, 1992.

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Readings for next week

• Psychoanalytic Criticism chap 3 (pp 147-153
  Reader 29- 32 )
• "Eveline" by James Joyce (Reader 67-69)