New Criticismn.
/ˌnjuː ˈkrɪtᵻsɪz(ə)m/, U.S. /ˈn(j)u ˈkrɪdəˌsɪz(ə)m/ Literary Criticism.
A type of literary criticism (applied esp. to poetry) popular in North American and British universities from the 1940s to the 1970s, which sought to establish rigorous and objective methods of formal interpretation, paying particular attention to structural coherence achieved through the use of irony, paradox, and ambiguity.Although inspired in large part by the work of the British critics I. A. Richards and William Empson in the 1920s, New Criticism is more closely associated with post-war American critics such as John Crowe Ransom, Cleanth Brooks, and W. K. Wimsatt. Cf. close reading at close adj. 19b, practical criticism n. at practical adj. and n. Compounds 2.
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criticism1625
critical theory1799
literary theory1807
autocriticism1820
pseudo-criticism1851
Formgeschichte1923
form-criticism1928
form-history1928
practical criticism1929
New Criticism1941
contextualism1955
patternism1956
objectivism1961
narratology1971
new historicism1972
deconstruction1973
post-structuralism1975
deconstructionism1980
theory1982
1911 J. E. Spingarn New Criticism (title) The new criticism.
1911 J. E. Spingarn New Criticism 2 What this secret is, and into what new paths Criticism is being led by it, is the subject of my lecture to-night.]
1941 J. C. Ransom (title) The new criticism.
1941 J. C. Ransom New Crit. i. 3 Discussion of the new criticism must start with Mr. Richards.
1948 Poetry Dec. 153 The Father of the New Criticism is probably I. A. Richards.
1952 M. McCarthy Groves of Academe (1953) x. 212 The true attitude of Eliot, he suspected, was manifest in his disciples, who in all their voluminous New Criticism had given Joyce scarcely a word of exegesis.
1956 A. Wilson Anglo-Saxon Attitudes i. iii. 59 Hardy was back from New York with some frightfully funny stories about the New Criticism boys.
1986 Brit. Jrnl. Aesthetics Autumn 313 Derridean-Yale deconstruction is to French structuralism and New Criticism very much what Crocean aesthetics was to the aesthetic positivism of the nineteenth century.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2003; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1941