New Criticism: Theories

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New Criticism Theories

• New Critical Approach to Narratives The Jilting
  of Granny Weatherall as an Example

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Outline

• The Jilting of Granny Weatherall
• New Critical Approach to Poetry Narratives
• New Criticism Major Views and Theorists

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The Jilting of Granny Weatherall

• 1. How do you characterize Granny?  What does she
  feel about being jilted?  What is she proud of?
• 2. How does Granny relate to the people around
  her?  Why is she impatient with the doctor as
  well as her daughter Cordelia?
• 3. Why is Granny pre-occupied with Hapsy?
• 4. What is Grannys obsession? Has she got over
  it at the end? What are her concepts of hell
  and God?
• 5. How does the narrative style help convey the
  meanings you have found? Is Granny a reliable
  narrator? Are there contradictions in her?

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Granny Weatherall personality

• 1. She has weathered all jilting, death of her
  husband and daughter, hardships, her own
  experience of death. (e.g. pp. 490-91)
• 2. Strong and stubborn cannot stand being seen
  as senile (e.g. seeing Dr. Harry as a child
  cannot stand Cornelia) (pp. 488 489 490.)
• 3. Keep things in order p. 491.
• 4. Her mind in disorder e.g. other people
  floating around her imagining things
  gradually separated from reality (p. 492. cannot
  hear lose sense of time) taking a cart.

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Disorder and Contradictions in Grannys mind

• 1. Views of death get over death, but still
  unfamiliar with it p. 489-90.
• 2. Shifts between past and present first
  remembering and then going back to the past (e.g.
  490-91)
• 3. Grannys feelings about being jilted
• a. Experience of Hell (p. 491 . . . A whirl of
  dark smoke )
• b. wounded vanity. P. 492
• 4. Believe in God (pp. 491 492 493)
• 5. Obsession avoid thinking of George and cannot
  forget him (493) I found a whole world
  better.

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Ending Possible Reading

• Possible readings
• 1. She decides to take action, instead of
  waiting.
• 2. No bridegroom can satisfy her. . . .the
  second bridegroom, Christ, denies her his
  presence for the same reason that George
  didwhich is that He knows she does not really
  want Him. (Cobb in Bloom 101).
• 3. Can never forget Granny is fixated on a
  juvenile romance. She mistakes Christ for her
  bridegroom.

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Granny is not ready to die

• 1. Love for Hapsy pp. 492 - 495
• "When this one was born it should be the last. 
  .. . It should have been born first, for it was
  the one she had truly wanted. .  .
• 2. Love and care for the other children and the
  other people.
• 3. God does not give her a sign to make her ready
  to die or take her to heaven.

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Texts about Death

• Can we compare Granny with After Death,
  Bourne, Convergence of the Twain and A
  Slumber did her Spirit Seal?
• Two ways
• -- make personal association and evaluation
• -- find a proper context (e.g. the difficult and
  contradictory ways of female self-assertions in
  19th and 20th century Brit. Am. Lit., when men
  are still dominant in both literature and
  society) and then try to specify it.

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New Criticism Methodology (1) Poetry
Whole Themes pattern, tension, ambiguities,
paradox, contradictions

• Parts
• Denotations, connotations
• and etymological roots
• Allusions
• Prosody
• Relationships
• among
• the various elements

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New Criticism Methodology (1) Narrative
Whole Themes harmonized pattern, tension,
ambiguities, paradox, contradictions

• Parts
• Narrator
• (Point of view),
• dialogue,
• setting,
• Plot
• Characterization
• Relationships
• among
• the various elements

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New Criticism Major Theorists

• T.S. Eliot
• objective correlative
• The poem is an impersonal formulation of common
  feelings and emotions. (textbook p. 40)
• emphasis on structural analysis
• the poet as a catalyst (42)
• I. A. Richards (Practical Criticism) Cleanth
  Brooks (Understanding Poetry), F. R. Leavis
  (Scrutiny), etc.

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New Criticism Major Views

• A poem is autonomous, with an ontological status.
  
• Intentional Fallacy,
• Affective Fallacy
• Poetry offers a different kind of truth (poetic
  truth) than science.
• Heresy of Paraphrase

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Reference

• Katherine Anne Porter / edited, with an
  introduction by Harold Bloom. New York Chelsea
  House P, 1996.