Formalism

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Formalism

• EH 4301
• Spring 2006

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And though one may consider a poem as an instance
of historical or ethical documentation, the poem
itself, if literature is to be studied as
literature, remains finally the object for study.
A poem should always be treated as an organic
system of relationships, and the poetic quality
should never be understood as inhering in one or
more factors taken in isolation. Cleanth
Brooks and Robert Penn Warren Understanding
Poetry
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Historical Development

• Early part of 20th century
• Historical/biographical research dominated
  literary scholarship
• Extrinsic analysis of times/life of author
• Philosophical/moral
• Valued moral qualities exhibited in text
• Impressionistic
• What matters is how we feel or what we personally
  see in a work
• Romanticism remnant
• Concerned with artists feelings and attitudes
  presented in works

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Formalism

• Declared objective existence of poem
• Only the poem itself can be objectively
  evaluated, not the feelings, attitudes, values
  and beliefs of the author or reader.
• the text itself
• Differing approaches to textual analysis among
  formalists
• Disagreement concerning various elements that
  made up poem

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Historical Development

• Emerged as a powerful force in 1940s
• New Critics
• John Crowe Ransom
• Robert Penn Warren
• Cleanth Brooks
• Alan Tate
• Andrew Lytle
• Donald Davidson

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Historical Development

• Emerged as a powerful force in 1940s
• Ill Take My Stand (1930)
• Understanding Poetry An Anthology for College
  Students by Brooks and Warren
• Emerged as leading form of textual analysis in
  American universities through the late 1930s
  until the early 1970s.

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Historical Development

• Roots in early 1900s
• British critics and authors who helped lay
  foundation of New Criticism
• T.S. Eliot
• I.A. Richards
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• A literary piece exists in its own way.

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Historical Development

• Eliot
• The poem does not infuse the poem with his or her
  personality and emotions, but uses language in
  such a way as to incorporate within the poem the
  impersonal feelings and emotions common to all
  humankind. Poetry is not, then, the freeing of
  the poets emotions, but an escape from them.
  Because the poem is an impersonal formulation of
  common feelings and emotions, the successful poem
  unites the poets impressions and ideas with
  those common to all humanity, producing a text
  that is not a mere reflection of the poets
  personal feelings.

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Historical Development

• Eliot
• Good reader of poetry must be instructed in
  literary technique
• Perceives the poem structurally
• Acquainted with established poetic traditions
• Must be trained in reading good poetry
• Elizabethans
• John Donne
• Other metaphysical poets

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Historical Development

• Poor reader
• Simply expresses his or her personal emotions and
  reactions to a text
• Untrained in literary techniques and
  craftsmanship

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Historical Development

• Poor reader
• A poem can mean anything its reader or its author
  wishes it to mean.
• Good reader
• Only through a detailed structural analysis of a
  poem can the correct interpretation arise.

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Objective Correlative

• Indirect and impersonal theory of the creation of
  emotions in poetry.
• The only way of expressing emotion through art is
  to find an objective correlative
• A set of objects, a situation, a chain of events,
  or reactions that can awaken in the reader the
  emotional response the author desires without
  being a direct statement of that emotion.
• When the external facts are presented, they
  somehow come together (correlate) and immediately
  evoke emotion.

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Assumptions

• New Criticism
• The study of imaginative literature is valuable
• To study poetry or any literary work is to engage
  in an aesthetic experience that can lead to
  truth.
• Poetic truth involves the use of imagination and
  intuition (discernable ONLY in poetry)
• Through examination of the poem itself, we can
  ascertain truths that cannot be perceived through
  the language and logic of science.
• scientific truth Water freezes at 32 degrees F.

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Assertions

• NC begins with defining its object of concern
  (POEM)
• Possess it own being exists like any other
  object.
• an artifact an objective, self-contained,
  autonomous entity with its own structure
• Wimsatt poem becomes a verbal icon
• THE TEXT ITSELF

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Assertions

• Objective theory of art
• Meaning of a poem must not be equated with its
  authors feelings or stated or implied
  intentions.
• Public text to be understood by applying
  standards of public discourse
• Intentional fallacy
• fundamental error of interpretation

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Assertions

• Do not deny the poem is somehow related to its
  author.
• Eliot used the following analogy
• Chemical reactions occur in the presence of a
  catalyst
• Catalyst element that causes, but is not
  affected by, the reaction
• Poets mind is the catalyst for the reaction that
  yields the poem.

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Assertions

• NC give little credence to the biographical or
  contextual history of the poem.
• If intentional fallacy is correct, biographical
  data will not help us ascertain a poems meaning.
• Although social and political context may indeed
  help in understanding the poem, its real meaning
  cannot reside in this extrinsic or
  outside-the-text information.

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Assertions

• Readers emotional response to the text is
  neither important nor equivalent to its
  interpretation.
• Affective fallacy
• Confuses what a poem is (its meaning) with what
  it does (the emotions it produces).
• Leads to impressionistic responses relativism
• chaos

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Where do we find the poems meaning?

• Because it is an artifact or object, meaning must
  reside within its own structure.
• Like all objects a poem and its structure can be
  analyzed scientifically
• Through Close Reading, we can ascertain the
  structure of the poem to see how it operates to
  achieve its unity and to discover how meaning
  evolves directly from the poem itself.

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• The poets chief concern
• How meaning is achieved through the various and
  sometimes conflicting elements operating in the
  poem itself.

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• Etymology of individual words is important to NC.
• Word meanings change from one time period to
  another
• Critic must research and discover what individual
  words meant at the time the poem was written.

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• Literary Language
• Relies on connotation
• Implications, associations, suggestions,
  evocation of meaning, shades of meaning
• Communicates tone, attitude, and feeling
• Father authority, protection, responsibility
• Scientific language
• Relies on denotation
• Father male parent

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Chief characteristic of poem

• Coherence
• Organic unity all parts of a poem are
  interrelated and interconnected, with each part
  reflecting and helping to support the poems
  central idea.
• Allows for the harmonization of conflicting
  ideas, feelings and attitudes, and results in a
  poems oneness.

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• Oneness
• Achieved through
• Paradox
• Irony
• Ambiguity
• Tension