New Criticism

New Criticism was an influential movement in Anglo-American literary studies of the 1930s–1950s that upheld the autonomy of the literary text and the method of 'close reading.' The New Critics focused on the work itself as a self-sufficient verbal structure, disregarding the author's biography and historical context. They introduced the notions of the 'intentional fallacy' (the error of appealing to the author's intention) and the 'affective fallacy' (the error of appealing to the emotional effect), formulated by William Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley. Key figures were John Crowe Ransom (whose book 'The New Criticism,' 1941, gave the movement its name), Cleanth Brooks, Robert Penn Warren, and Allen Tate, along with the precursors I. A. Richards and T. S. Eliot. New Criticism concentrated on the analysis of paradox, irony, ambiguity, and figurative structure, long defining the practice of teaching literature in universities.