Assignment #4: (American) New Criticism

Note to self: sort out New Criticism!

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Summary...

Well, all I can say is that NC makes sense now. The Tyson text did a great job of summarizing it, and her essay on "The Great Gatsby" makes me want to run out and buy it / eat it / see the world anew.

I'm debating whether I need to run myself through the gauntlet of applying it to some text... but honestly, NC methods are pretty much what I've done all my life, without realizing it, as it turns out. I have to disagree with the notion of "a single best interpretation," of course, but so has everyone since the 1960's; the concepts of NC still permeate American education even if its strict demands for organic unity are no longer in vogue.

Mind you, I'm a fan of organic unity. I can appreciate the IDEA of a play like "Ubu Roi," but at the end of an excruciating three hour experience of ad-libbed French surrealist theater - well, I'd be interested to examine how the original, textual version used its formal elements to create "complexity" and "order" that supposedly legitimate the greatness of literary texts. But then again, I'd have to pretend the stage version didn't matter to me, nor the text's contextual history as a piece of Bohemian Paris, nor the author's predisposition for opium, yadda yadda yah.

I have written out a much more cohesive summary of NC, but my brain is exhausted from the Germany-Ghana match today (1-0!) and that's all I've got for today.

*Note to self: The "Well-Wrought Urn" by Cleanth Brooks (1947) is the go-to text for NC, and T.S. Eliot is among its major figures.

Helpful website: Dr. Warren Hedges "New Criticism Explained"
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