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New Critical Approaches

to Poetry

From Analysis to Critical Essay

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This Is Just To Say (Intrinsic)

I have eaten

the plums

that were inthe icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweetand so cold.

Lack of punctuation; 

The title

irregular syntax

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This Is Just To Say (Extrinsic)

William Carlos

Williams¶

experimenting with

type-writer  the influence of 

Imagism and Haiku

Comparison with

³Shall I Compare

Thee to a Summar¶s

Day?´

Free Associations?

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This Is Just To Say : Main Idea

for Paper Writing?

1. Despite the apparently casual title

and syntax matching the banality of itstopic, the poem reveals and celebrates

the sensual beauty of daily objects.

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³The Welsh Hill Country´:

r eading process & Paper 

writing

1. Find out the contrast ± between

³sheep . . . Arranged romantically´ and ³thefluke, the foot-rot and the fat maggot´

Do we write down the summary right after 

the first reading?

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³The Welsh Hill Country´

Images of decay and death:

The fluke and foot-rot and the fat maggot; 

The moss and the mould on the coldchimneys,

The nettles growing through the cracked

doors, The houses stand empty

the slow pthisis Wasting his frame

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³The Welsh Hill Country´

Further contrasts:

Gnawing ± grazing ± a man farming

³arranged romantically´ ± ³contribute

grimly to the accepted pattern´

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Before New Criticism

Extrinsic studies:

e.g. biographic studies, textual scholarship

(historical studies),

Impressionist approach,

 New Criticism: set up literary studies as a profession

// Russian Formalism

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 New Criticism: Historical context

After the second world war 

Like existentialism, New Criticism tries to

retain human values.

 New Critics 1. re-direct critical attentionfrom the external to the internal (textual),

2. Upholds liberal humanism in face of worldly chaos. (The most valuable is our free will.)

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 New Criticism: Basic Principles

1. "the text and the text alone" approach

2. a poem as an autonomy

3. objective correlative (T.S. Eliot)

4. intentional fallacy v.s. the poetµs mind

as a catalyst

5. affective fallacy :

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 New Criticism: Basic Principles

(2) 6. The text¶s meaning -- reside within its

own structure.

7. organic unity.

** organic unity--all parts of a poem areinterrelated and interconnected, with

each part reflecting and helping to supportthe poem's central idea. ...allows for theharmonization of conflicting ideas, feelings,and attitudes, ...

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 New Criticism on Poetry

1. Search for oppositions in the text: e.g.

 paradox, ambiguity, irony

2. Study the poetic elements closely.

e.g. prosody

3. From Parts to an Organic Wholeness