Title: Formalism
1Formalism
2And though one may consider a poem as an instance
of historical or ethical documentation, the poem
itself, if literature is to be studied as
literature, remains finally the object for study.
A poem should always be treated as an organic
system of relationships, and the poetic quality
should never be understood as inhering in one or
more factors taken in isolation. Cleanth
Brooks and Robert Penn Warren Understanding
Poetry
3Historical Development
- Early part of 20th century
- Historical/biographical research dominated
literary scholarship - Extrinsic analysis of times/life of author
- Philosophical/moral
- Valued moral qualities exhibited in text
- Impressionistic
- What matters is how we feel or what we personally
see in a work - Romanticism remnant
- Concerned with artists feelings and attitudes
presented in works
4Formalism
- Declared objective existence of poem
- Only the poem itself can be objectively
evaluated, not the feelings, attitudes, values
and beliefs of the author or reader. - the text itself
- Differing approaches to textual analysis among
formalists - Disagreement concerning various elements that
made up poem
5Historical Development
- Emerged as a powerful force in 1940s
- New Critics
- John Crowe Ransom
- Robert Penn Warren
- Cleanth Brooks
- Alan Tate
- Andrew Lytle
- Donald Davidson
6Historical Development
- Emerged as a powerful force in 1940s
- Ill Take My Stand (1930)
- Understanding Poetry An Anthology for College
Students by Brooks and Warren - Emerged as leading form of textual analysis in
American universities through the late 1930s
until the early 1970s.
7Historical Development
- Roots in early 1900s
- British critics and authors who helped lay
foundation of New Criticism - T.S. Eliot
- I.A. Richards
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- A literary piece exists in its own way.
8Historical Development
- Eliot
- The poem does not infuse the poem with his or her
personality and emotions, but uses language in
such a way as to incorporate within the poem the
impersonal feelings and emotions common to all
humankind. Poetry is not, then, the freeing of
the poets emotions, but an escape from them.
Because the poem is an impersonal formulation of
common feelings and emotions, the successful poem
unites the poets impressions and ideas with
those common to all humanity, producing a text
that is not a mere reflection of the poets
personal feelings.
9Historical Development
- Eliot
- Good reader of poetry must be instructed in
literary technique - Perceives the poem structurally
- Acquainted with established poetic traditions
- Must be trained in reading good poetry
- Elizabethans
- John Donne
- Other metaphysical poets
10Historical Development
- Poor reader
- Simply expresses his or her personal emotions and
reactions to a text - Untrained in literary techniques and
craftsmanship
11Historical Development
- Poor reader
- A poem can mean anything its reader or its author
wishes it to mean. - Good reader
- Only through a detailed structural analysis of a
poem can the correct interpretation arise.
12Objective Correlative
- Indirect and impersonal theory of the creation of
emotions in poetry. - The only way of expressing emotion through art is
to find an objective correlative - A set of objects, a situation, a chain of events,
or reactions that can awaken in the reader the
emotional response the author desires without
being a direct statement of that emotion. - When the external facts are presented, they
somehow come together (correlate) and immediately
evoke emotion.
13Assumptions
- New Criticism
- The study of imaginative literature is valuable
- To study poetry or any literary work is to engage
in an aesthetic experience that can lead to
truth. - Poetic truth involves the use of imagination and
intuition (discernable ONLY in poetry) - Through examination of the poem itself, we can
ascertain truths that cannot be perceived through
the language and logic of science. - scientific truth Water freezes at 32 degrees F.
14Assertions
- NC begins with defining its object of concern
(POEM) - Possess it own being exists like any other
object. - an artifact an objective, self-contained,
autonomous entity with its own structure - Wimsatt poem becomes a verbal icon
- THE TEXT ITSELF
15Assertions
- Objective theory of art
- Meaning of a poem must not be equated with its
authors feelings or stated or implied
intentions. - Public text to be understood by applying
standards of public discourse - Intentional fallacy
- fundamental error of interpretation
16Assertions
- Do not deny the poem is somehow related to its
author. - Eliot used the following analogy
- Chemical reactions occur in the presence of a
catalyst - Catalyst element that causes, but is not
affected by, the reaction - Poets mind is the catalyst for the reaction that
yields the poem.
17Assertions
- NC give little credence to the biographical or
contextual history of the poem. - If intentional fallacy is correct, biographical
data will not help us ascertain a poems meaning. - Although social and political context may indeed
help in understanding the poem, its real meaning
cannot reside in this extrinsic or
outside-the-text information.
18Assertions
- Readers emotional response to the text is
neither important nor equivalent to its
interpretation. - Affective fallacy
- Confuses what a poem is (its meaning) with what
it does (the emotions it produces). - Leads to impressionistic responses relativism
- chaos
19Where do we find the poems meaning?
- Because it is an artifact or object, meaning must
reside within its own structure. - Like all objects a poem and its structure can be
analyzed scientifically - Through Close Reading, we can ascertain the
structure of the poem to see how it operates to
achieve its unity and to discover how meaning
evolves directly from the poem itself.
20- The poets chief concern
- How meaning is achieved through the various and
sometimes conflicting elements operating in the
poem itself.
21- Etymology of individual words is important to NC.
- Word meanings change from one time period to
another - Critic must research and discover what individual
words meant at the time the poem was written.
22- Literary Language
- Relies on connotation
- Implications, associations, suggestions,
evocation of meaning, shades of meaning - Communicates tone, attitude, and feeling
- Father authority, protection, responsibility
- Scientific language
- Relies on denotation
- Father male parent
23Chief characteristic of poem
- Coherence
- Organic unity all parts of a poem are
interrelated and interconnected, with each part
reflecting and helping to support the poems
central idea. - Allows for the harmonization of conflicting
ideas, feelings and attitudes, and results in a
poems oneness.
24- Oneness
- Achieved through
- Paradox
- Irony
- Ambiguity
- Tension