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New Criticism
New Criticism was a Formalism (literature), formalist movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic object. The movement derived its name from John Crowe Ransom's 1941 book ''The New Criticism''. The works of University of Cambridge, Cambridge scholar I. A. Richards, especially his ''Practical Criticism'', ''The Principles of Literary Criticism'' and ''The Meaning of Meaning'', which offered what was claimed to be an empirical scientific approach, were important to the development of a New Critical methodology. Cleanth Brooks, John Crowe Ransom, W. K. Wimsatt, and Monroe Beardsley also made significant contributions to New Criticism. It was Wimsatt and Beardsley who introduced the ideas of Authorial intent, intentional fallacy and affective fallacy. Also very influenti ...
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Formalism (literature)
Formalism is a school of literary criticism and literary theory having mainly to do with structural purposes of a particular text. It is the study of a text without taking into account any outside influence. Formalism rejects or sometimes simply "brackets" (''i.e.'', ignores for the purpose of analysis, ) notions of culture or societal influence, authorship and content, but instead focuses on modes, genres, discourse, and forms. In literary theory In literary theory, formalism refers to critical approaches that analyze, interpret, or evaluate the inherent features of a text. These features include not only grammar and syntax but also literary devices such as meter and Trope (literature), tropes. The formalistic approach reduces the importance of a text's historical, biographical, and cultural context. Formalism rose to prominence in the early twentieth century as a reaction against Romanticist theories of literature, which centered on the artist and individual creative genius, o ...
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Feminist Literary Criticism
Feminist literary criticism is literary criticism informed by feminist theory, or more broadly, by the politics of feminism. It uses the principles and ideology of feminism to critique the language of literature. This school of thought seeks to analyze and describe the ways in which literature portrays the narrative of male domination by exploring the economic, social, political, and psychological forces embedded within literature. This way of thinking and criticizing works can be said to have changed the way literary texts are viewed and studied, as well as changing and expanding the canon of what is commonly taught. Traditionally, feminist literary criticism has sought to examine old texts within literary canon through a new lens. Specific goals of feminist criticism include both the development and discovery of female tradition of writing, and rediscovering of old texts, while also interpreting symbolism of women's writing so that it will not be lost or ignored by the male poin ...
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Affective Fallacy
Affective fallacy is a term from literary criticism used to refer to the supposed error of judging or evaluating a text on the basis of its emotional effects on a reader. The term was coined by W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley in 1949 as a principle of New Criticism which is often paired with their study of ''The Intentional Fallacy''. Concept The concept of affective fallacy is an answer to the idea of impressionistic criticism, which argues that the reader's response to a poem is the ultimate indication of its value. It is the antithesis of affective criticism, which is the practice of evaluating the effect that a literary work has on its reader or audience. The concept was presented after the authors had presented their paper on ''The Intentional Fallacy''. First defined in an article published in ''The Sewanee Review'' in 1946, the concept of an affective fallacy was most clearly articulated in ''The Verbal Icon'', Wimsatt's collection of essays published in 1954. Wimsatt use ...
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Authorial Intentionality
In literary theory and aesthetics, authorial intent refers to an author's intent as it is encoded in their work. Authorial intentionalism is the hermeneutical view that an author's intentions should constrain the ways in which a text is properly interpreted. Opponents, who dispute its hermeneutical importance, have labelled this position the intentional fallacy and count it among the informal fallacies. There are in fact two types of Intentionalism: Actual Intentionalism and Hypothetical Intentionalism. Actual Intentionalism is the standard intentionalist view that the meaning of a work is dependent on authorial intent. Hypothetical Intentionalism is a more recent view; it views the meaning of a work as being what an ideal reader would hypothesize the writer's intent to have been — for hypothetical intentionalism, it is ultimately the hypothesis of the reader, not the truth, that matters. Types of actual intentionalism Extreme intentionalism Extreme intentionalism, the classi ...
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Intentional Fallacy
In literary theory and aesthetics, authorial intent refers to an author's intention, intent as it is encoded in their Work of art, work. Authorial intentionalism is the Hermeneutics, hermeneutical view that an author's intentions should constrain the ways in which a text is properly interpreted. Opponents, who dispute its hermeneutical importance, have labelled this position the intentional fallacy and count it among the informal fallacies. There are in fact two types of Intentionalism: Actual Intentionalism and Hypothetical Intentionalism. Actual Intentionalism is the standard intentionalist view that the meaning of a work is dependent on authorial intent. Hypothetical Intentionalism is a more recent view; it views the meaning of a work as being what an ideal reader would hypothesize the writer's intent to have been — for hypothetical intentionalism, it is ultimately the hypothesis of the reader, not the truth, that matters. Types of actual intentionalism Extreme intentionali ...
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Snark (Lewis Carroll)
The snark is a fictional animal species created by Lewis Carroll. "Snark" is a portmanteau of "snake" and "shark". This creature appears in Carroll's nonsense poem '' The Hunting of the Snark.'' His descriptions of the creatures were, in his own words, unimaginable, and he wanted that to remain so.''The Annotated Snark'', edited by Martin Gardner, Penguin Books, 1974 The origin of the poem According to Carroll, the initial inspiration to write the poem – which he called an ''agony in eight fits'' – was the final line, ''For the snark was a boojum, you see''. Carroll was asked repeatedly to explain the snark. In all cases, his answer was he did not know and could not explain. Later commentators have offered many analyses of the work. One such likens the contemporary Commissioners in Lunacy individually to the ten hunters, noting that Carroll's favourite uncle, Skeffington Lutwidge, himself a member of the commission had, like the poem's Baker, met his end in a "chasm"—L ...
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Southern Agrarians
The Southern Agrarians were twelve American Southerners who wrote an agrarian literary manifesto in 1930. They and their essay collection, ''I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition'', contributed to the Southern Renaissance, the reinvigoration of Southern literature in the 1920s and 1930s. They were based at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. John Crowe Ransom was their unofficial leader, though Robert Penn Warren became their most prominent member. The membership overlaps with The Fugitives. Members The twelve authors of the Southern Agrarians manifesto, ''I'll Take My Stand'', were: * Donald Davidson, poet, essayist, reviewer and historian * John Gould Fletcher, poet and historian * Henry Blue Kline * Lyle H. Lanier * Andrew Nelson Lytle, poet, novelist and essayist * Herman Clarence Nixon * Frank Lawrence Owsley, historian * John Crowe Ransom, poet, professor, essayist * Allen Tate, poet * John Donald Wade, biographer and essayist *Robert Penn Warren, ...
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Trinity College (Connecticut)
Trinity College is a private liberal arts college in Hartford, Connecticut, United States. Founded as Washington College in 1823, it is the second-oldest college in the state of Connecticut. Coeducational since 1969, the college enrolls 2,235 students. Trinity offers 41 majors and 28 interdisciplinary minors. The college is a member of the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC). History 19th century Bishop Thomas Brownell opened "Washington College" in 1824 to nine male studentsAlbert E. Van Dusen, ''Connecticut'' (1961) pp 362-63 and the vigorous protest of Yale alumni. A 14-acre site was chosen, at the time about a half-mile from the city of Hartford. The college was renamed "Trinity College" in 1845; the original campus consisted of two Greek Revival buildings. One of the Greek Revival buildings housed a chapel, library, and lecture rooms. The other was a dormitory for the male students. In 1872, Trinity College was persuaded by the state to ...
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Robert Penn Warren
Robert Penn Warren (April 24, 1905 – September 15, 1989) was an American poet, novelist, literary critic and professor at Yale University. He was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the literary journal '' The Southern Review'' with Cleanth Brooks in 1935. He received the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel for '' All the King's Men'' (1946) and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1958 and 1979. He is the only person to have won Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction and poetry. Yale awarded Warren an honorary Doctor of Letters degree in 1973. Early years Warren was born in Guthrie, Kentucky, very near the Tennessee-Kentucky border, to Robert Warren and Anna Penn. Warren's mother's family had roots in Virginia, having given their name to the community of Penn's Store in Patrick County, Virginia, and she was a descendant of Revolutionary War soldier Colonel Abram Penn. After he had graduated from a priva ...
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Kenyon College
Kenyon College ( ) is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Gambier, Ohio, United States. It was founded in 1824 by Episcopal Bishop Philander Chase. It is the oldest private institution of higher education in the state of Ohio and enrolls approximately 1,800 undergraduate students. Students can choose from over 50 majors, minors, and concentrations, including self-designed majors. The college is located on a hill overlooking the Kokosing River and neighbors Mount Vernon, Ohio. Its campus is set in rural surroundings that host seven ecosystems. There are more than 120 student clubs and organizations. Kenyon athletes are called Owls and compete in the NCAA Division III North Coast Athletic Conference. Kenyon College is Educational accreditation, accredited by the Higher Learning Commission. History Founding After becoming the first Episcopal Episcopal Diocese of Ohio, Bishop of Ohio in 1818, Philander Chase found ...
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Reception Theory
Reception theory is a version of Reader-response criticism, reader response literary theory that emphasizes each particular reader's reception or interpretation in making meaning from a literary text. Reception theory is generally referred to as audience reception in the analysis of communications models. In literary studies, reception theory originated from the work of Hans-Robert Jauss in the late 1960s, and the most influential work was produced during the 1970s and early 1980s in Germany and the US (Fortier 132), with some notable work done in other Western European countries. A form of reception theory has also been applied to the study of historiography. The cultural theorist Stuart Hall (cultural theorist), Stuart Hall was one of the main proponents of reception theory, first developed in his 1973 essay 'Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse'. His approach, called the encoding/decoding model of communication, is a form of textual analysis that focuses on the scop ...
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