21 New Criticism to Archetypal Criticism: John Ransom Crowe, Northrop Frye

Mr. Yogesh Sumantrao Kashikar

Objectives–

To learn development in new criticism up to archetypal criticism
To learn their basic assumption and key concepts.
To understand the position of new and myth critics and their contribution

New Criticism –its origin

The origin of new criticism is rather complex and apparently contradictory- especially in its theoretical and critical positions and practices. It is in sharp reaction to sociological or Marxian criticism which regarded literature as a product of society. It stressed on textual criticism. It is just like establishing a new professional criticism. The influence of Matthew Arnold’s concept of ‘poetry and culture’ is clearly perceptible in them. The New Critics were also influenced by modernist poets/critics like T. E. Hulme and T. S. Eliot, whose poetry and criticism emphasized the importance of the internal dynamics of poetic form. Before New Criticism, historical, philological, and biographical methods were predominant which focused on aesthetics in a way that lacked method and discipline. But New Criticism encompasses a wide variety of formalist approaches. At the foundations of the New Criticism was the idea of the critic as a kind of technician, whose specialized knowledge and skills enabled a form of close reading of literary texts that found meaning and value in form. The New Criticism flourished from the 1920s through the 1950s and was primarily concerned with poetry and poetic form. Though one can trace the origin of it back to a lecture- ‘the New Criticism’ delivered by Elias Spingarn in 1920, the term ‘New Criticism’ is used to refer the theory and practice that was prominent in the American Literary Criticism until late 1960 and the term is coined after the John Crowe Ransom’s the most influential work “The New Criticism” in 1941. It is less a coherent literary theory than the critical and theoretical approaches all of which are grounded on the idea that the literary work is autonomous; and its unity and meaning are constituted primarily by formal and rhetorical features that take precedence over social, political, and biographical contexts. Unlike formalism, it emerged out of literary modernism as a set of interpretive strategies that did not have a wide impact outside literary studies.

These strategies were grounded in large part on the practice and theoretical insights of modernist poet-critics, like T.S. Eliot, R. P. Warren, I. A. Richards, W. K. Wimsatt, Beardsley, R. S. Crane, Brooks and Warren, John Crowe Ransom and Allen Tate. These critics were instrumental in promoting the new critical doctrines in England and the United States. They were interested in developing techniques of close reading that would be sensitive to how irony, paradox, ambiguity, and other rhetorical features constitute the internal dynamics of the literary work. Formal unity, therefore, was a fundamental component of what a poem means and was inseparable from its content.

Basic Assumption and Practices

Unlike historical criticism or biographical criticism, New Criticism completely concerns with the text itself- with its language and organization with ontological discussion. It warms the reader against the critical practices which diverts attention from text itself.
The distinctive practice of new critics is ‘close reading’- a detailed and subtle analysis of complex interrelations and ambiguities of the inherent elements of the literary work. It studies how the parts of the text relate with each other, how it contains and resolves ‘irony’, ‘paradox’, ‘tension’ and ‘ambiguities’. Their emphasis is on the ‘organic unity of overall structure and verbal meaning.’
Unlike the Reader Response Theory, the merit of the work is to be found in its language and structure.
They conceive literary work as being a literary construct. They think about figures of speech, symbols, imagery, meaning within text. For them, the essential components of a literary work are symbols, images, words rather than plot, character, theme, thought.
They tried to displace content of literary analysis and treat the work’s form and its content.
Form was treated as self contained and autonomous entity deserving all critical attention.
For them, the literary art is a complete entity in itself and the function of the critic is to analyze, interpret, and evaluate the work of art. And his function should be unbiased with focus only on the text itself.
The study of words, their arrangements, the way in which they act and react on each other is all important. Words, besides their literal meaning and significance, also have emotional, associative, symbolic significance; and only close reading and analysis can bring out their total meaning. Right from I. A. Richards, Empson, R. S. Crane, Brooks and Warren, John Crowe Ransom and Allen Tate, we find the same search for meaning of words.

Similarities and Difference Between New Criticism And Formalism

There are some similarities and difference between Formalism and New Criticism. It is sometimes called as having formalistic in its approach Both stress that literary work is a self-sufficient verbal entity- a world within itself. Both stress on the analysis of literary work.Both consider poetry as a special mode of language.

But there is one main difference. The formalists emphasize that the literary text is made up of linguistic and literary devices to achieve special effect of foregrounding and defamiliarization. They stress on the literariness of a work; on other hand New Criticism emphasizes on the complex interplay within a text. For them, text is made up of irony, paradox, tension, and metaphorical meaning. The emphasis is on the organic unity of structure and verbal meaning.

New criticism is equivalent to establish new professional criticism. Its high point of influence was during the Second World War and the cold war succeeding it. The members of it are John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Cleanth Brooks, R.P. Balackmur, S. Crane, W. K. Wimsatt and Beardsley. A kinship with Arnold, Eliot, Leavis, and Empson who opposed modern inorganic civilization is distinct in them. Its emphasis on practical criticism makes it more pedagogical at once. It is ahistorical in nature and emphasizes on the close study of the words on the page. They view literary work as a self sufficient, autonomous object whose failure and success, charms or lack of it are to be found in the work itself. The merit of the work lies neither in the minds of the writer nor in the responses of the reader but in the language and the structure of the work itself. The text is more important than reader and writer.

Let us now see the most influential new critic John Crowe Ransom. He (April 30, 1888 – July 3, 1974) was an American educator, scholar, literary critic, poet, essayist and editor. He is considered to be a founder of the New Criticism school of literary criticism. He rejected the romanticists’ commitment to self-expression and perfectability as well as the naturalists’ insistence on fact (mostly scientific fact) and inference from fact as the basis of evaluating a work of art. Instead, he focused his attention on the work of art as an object in and of itself, independent of outside influences. He is a founder of ‘Kenyon Review and author of several literary and critical works including ‘The World’s Body’ (1938), The New Criticism (1941). In his seminal 1937 essay-“Criticism, Inc.”, Ransom laid out his ideal form of literary criticism stating that, “criticism must become more scientific, or precise and systematic.” At the end, he argued that personal responses to literature, historical scholarship, linguistic scholarship, and what he termed “moral studies” should not influence literary criticism.

His essay “Criticism Inc.” is appeared in the ‘Virginia Quarterly Review’ in 1937. Here he gave a definite trade mark to criticism. He pondered over the would-be critic. Or who can criticize more genuinely and dispassionately. He considers that a poet/ artist himself, a philosopher, and a professor could criticize poetry. But the criticism of the poet/ artist himself may be profoundly dominated by personal estimation ‘personal fallacies’ and they are better critics of their own art than are other artists whereas the philosopher’s criticism may be inclined to moral teaching. Their criticism may stem out from their prior philosophical stock, than on acute study of particulars. But the criticism of professor ( University Professor) remains free from fallacies. Only professor can dispassionately, clearly, perfectly judge and appreciate Literature.

Ransom asserts-“Criticism must become more scientific, or precise and systematic, and this means that it must be developed by the collective and sustained effort of learned persons.” He believes that Criticism, Inc. or Criticism, Ltd. is the business of professionals – professors of literature in particular.

The professors of English should not divert themselves into humanistic or leftist advocacy of a moral system, because their main concern is Literature as an art and its structure. Therefore they should not content with the historical knowledge but they can recourse to it only to increase their ability and appreciation.

Ransom predicates various ways that academics take to escape from their true criticism.

There is a personal judgment recording to subjective response / effect of a work.
There is synopsis and paraphrase.
There are historical, linguistic, moral studies and any other that concerns with abstract philosophy.

Ransom insisted to study the technique of art and in the case of poetry; one should concentrate on those devises that distinguish it from prose. He asserts that critic should ‘able to exhibit not the ‘prose-core’ but the differentia, residue, or tissue, which keeps the object poetical.’ For the good critic, the character of a poem lies in its way of exhibiting residuary quality. Later he distinguishes between ‘texture’ and ‘structure’.

The structure is the story, object, a situation, or whatever that gives the poem its argument. The structure is referred to the argument or concept within the work. It is a trial design or organization of a particular poem, the form to which all parts contribute. It is more comprehensive and includes the argument or the development of theme in a poem.
The texture is the ‘thingness’ of thing. It comprises the particular details and devices of a work. For example, the consistency of imagery helped to create ‘texture’ of a poem in Metaphysical school of poetry. The ‘texture’ stands for the basic metrical patterns, for relation of sounds, images, phrases with each other in a poem.

Ransom argues that the interplay of determinate and indeterminate meaning and the relation of structure and texture are important for critic. Here he differs from other new critics- what is structure to other new critics is texture to Ransom. He believes that a critic must first study the structural properties of a poem and then moves to an appreciation and judgment of its texture. He also argued that literary critics should regard a poem as an aesthetic object.

Many ideas that he explained in the essay would become very important in the development of The New Criticism. ‘Criticism Inc.’ and a number of Ransom’s other theoretical essays set forth some of the guiding principles that the New Critics would build upon. His former students, specifically Allen Tate, Cleanth Brooks, and Robert Penn Warren, had a greater hand in developing many of the key concepts (like “close reading”) that later came to define the New Criticism.

Limitation Of New Criticism

The limitations of New Critics were pin-pointed by Chicago Critics- especially by R.S. Crane in his book ‘Critics and Criticism’. (1952)

They are too much pre-occupied with textual analysis, words, irony, paradox, images and forget that the poem is organic whole.
Their approach is dogmatic, narrow and ignores the claim of historical, sociological, psychological and biological analysis. Each of them has its own significance.
Any art has two functions – aesthetic and moral. While the older criticism erred with over emphasis on moral function of literature, New criticism errs in it’s over emphasis on aesthetic function.
It ignores the reactions of critics and responses of readers. It also ignores the study of history of literary criticism which trains a critic to find out literary merits and its value.
The textual analysis can establish only the literary quality of a work; we need other critical methods to determinate its greatness.
All kinds of literature cannot be judge by textual approach. Though it may be effective for some genres, all genres cannot be evaluated by it.

Despite of all these limitations, New Criticism has left a deep and enduring mark on the criticism and the teaching of literature.

Origin and Development Of Archetypal Criticism

While the origin of new criticism is complex and apparently contradictory, the origin of Archetypal Criticism is more definite. The term ‘Archetype’ is derived from Greek word ‘Archi-topos’ which means ‘first impression.’ In Literary criticism, the term ‘Archetype’ denotes ‘recurrent narrative designs, patterns of action, character types, themes and images which are identifiable in a wide variety of works of literature as well as myths, dreams, and social rituals. Such recurrent archetypes are held to be the result of elemental and universal forms in human psyche. Such archetypes evoke a profound response from attentive readers because they share the archetypes expressed by authors. ‘Archetypal Literary criticism’ is concerned to analyzing a text in concern to the myths and archetypes that could be in the text in the form of description, symbols, images, allusions, references, characteristic traits, etc.

“Archetypal Criticism” owes its origin to James G. Frazer’s “The Golden Bough” and the psychological theories of C.G. Jung who applied the term to what he called “primordial images”, ‘the psychic residue’. The main source of Archetypal Criticism is myth and its study. Therefore it is also called as ‘myth criticism’. There is sharp difference between myth, legend and folklore. A ‘myth’ is a story in ‘mythology’ – a system of hereditary stories of ancient origin which were once believed to be true and which were served to explain why the world is as it is and why the thing happen as they do. Myth provides a rationale for social customs and observances and establishes the sanction rules by which people conduct their lives. If the protagonist is human being, the traditional story is called as ‘legend’. And if the story is concerns with supernatural beings but not God and the story is not a part of systematic mythology, it is called as ‘folklore’. For example the stories of Ram and Krishna are myth; while the stories of ‘Akabar and Bilbar’ are legend and the stories of ‘Vikram and Vetal’ or ‘Sihasan Battisi’ are folklore.

Basic Assumption and Practices

Myth Critic believes that just as dreams reflect the unconscious desires and anxieties of an individual, myths are symbolic projection of people’s hopes, values, fears and aspiration.
The critic works inductively by reading individual works and letting critical principles shape them out of the literature; that is, the critic examines the individual work to ascertain the archetypes underlying the work.
He tries to discover how literary work transforms reality to which readers give perennial response.
The myth critic is concerned to seek out those mysterious elements that inform certain literary works and that elicit, with almost uncanny force, dramatic and universal human reactions.
Just as Psychological analysis of literary work tends to be experimental and diagnostic; it is closely related to biological science. Myth Criticism tends to be speculative and philosophical; its affinities are with religion, anthropology, and cultural history.
The myth critic tries to reveals about the mind and character of a people by studying myths. And just as dreams reflect the unconscious desires and anxieties of the individual, so myths are the symbolic projections of a people’s hopes, values, fears, and aspirations
Unlike traditional critic, the myth critic is more interested in pre- history and biographies of Gods
Unlike formalist, the myth critic probes for inner spirit which gives the work its vitality and its enduring appeal.
Unlike Freudian critic, the myth critic sees a work as the manifestation of symbols and images arising from ‘collective unconsciousness.’

Archetypal criticism was first experimented by ‘Maud Bodkin’ in her book ‘Archetypal Patterns in Poetry’ in 1934. She explores and explains the feeling and associations evoked by certain passages of poetry. She focuses on Coleridge’s ‘Ancient Mariner’, Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet and Othello’ and Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost.’ She demonstrated that how the primordial images recur in poetry and how they appeal though their expression of inner life. But the archetypal criticism was at its most popular in the 1940s and 1950s, largely due to the work of Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye. It was not until the work of the Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye that archetypal criticism was theorized in purely literary terms. His major work is ‘Anatomy of Criticism (1957)’, ‘The Archetypes of Literature’ and ‘Fearful Symmetry.’(1947). He gives a new definition and nature to literature and criticism. He argues that one cannot learn literature but what one learns is the criticism of literature. For him, criticism has every features of science. Criticism should be a systematic, scientific and organic study. Criticism as a science is totally intelligible and literature as a subject of science is a source of new critical discoveries. Fry is of opinion that every poet has his own mythology, particular formation of images and symbols of which he is unconscious. But what will happen when the multiple poets use the same images and symbols in literature. Therefore he searches for archetypal patterns in Literature. For him, the key lies in the recognition of archetypes which constitute a unifying category of criticism. Myth is an archetype and central in literature. In the cycle of the day, of year and of human life, there is a pattern of significance out of which myth can be constructed. He proceeds from a theory of archetypal meaning to the theory of ‘mythoi.’ His theory of archetypal meaning includes apocalyptic, demonic and analogical imagery; while the theory of ‘mythoi’ includes the mythoi of spring (comedy), summer (romance), autumn (tragedy), and winter (irony and satire). The archetypal theme of comedy is recognition, of romance is conflict, of tragedy is catastrophe, and of irony and satire is frustration and confusion of heroism and effective action. Besides it, he analyses the archetype of quest myth, the relation of archetypal criticism to religion and God as human character. He also analyses the archetype of water, sun, pastoral images, forest or Arcadian and geometrical images, mineral world and archetypes of Good Mother, Holy Mother and Terrible Mother. At last he advocates that literature cannot be examined in isolation. It should be read in totality- from primitive to the sophisticated and the search for archetype is a kind of literary anthropology.

In ‘Fearful Symmetry’, Frye showed that Blake deliberately used a regular pattern of symbolism which reflected Milton and ultimately on the Bible. Frye also advocates a difference in the way a symbol is interpreted in connection with different genres. In the schema that he suggests for this purpose, he identifies five different spheres, namely, human, animal, vegetation, mineral and water. While humans in comedic work for fulfillment of wishes, in tragic it acts in a tyrannical way leading to isolation and downfall. Animals are gentle and pastoral in comedic while predatory in tragic. Vegetation is represented by the formations like gardens, parks and flowers in case of comic; in case of tragic, it is present in form of wild forest or barren land. Cities, temples, precious stones, etc. represent the mineral sphere in comedic which is represented by deserts, ruins and the likes in case of tragic. While the sphere of water is present in the form of rivers in comedic, it appears as floods, seas, etc. So, the same spheres are to be interpreted in different ways and to the different effects in case of the comedic and the tragic works, respectively.

In his “Literature as Context: Milton’s Lycidas”, Frye demonstrate how the subject of an elegy is not treated as an individual but as a representative of a dying spirit of nature. The pastoral name Lycidas is equivalent to Adonis and Milton uses the imagery of the cycle of sun, of season and of water.

Other prominent critics are G. Wilson Knight, Robert Graves, Phillip Wheelwright, Richard Chase, Leslie Fielder, Joseph Cambell, C.G. Jung and Annis Pratts. They emphasize the occurrence of mythical patterns in literature. They have analyzed the archetypes of birth- death-rebirth theme, the underground journey, the heavenly ascent, the search for father, the paradise – hell images, the Promethean rebel hero, the scapegoat and Earth Goddesses and the fatal woman.

LIMITATIONS OF MYTH CRITICISM

It should be clear that myth criticism offers some unusual opportunities for the enhancement of our literary appreciation and understanding and the application of myth criticism takes us far beyond the historical and aesthetic realms of literary study- back to the beginning of human kinds oldest rituals and beliefs and deep into our own individual hearts. There are some of the inherent limitations that we must pinpoint.

Despite the special importance of the myth critic’s contribution, Myth criticism is, for several reasons, poorly understood due to the lack of proper interpretive tools which become available through the development of various disciplines as anthropology, psychology, and cultural history in recent age.
Second, many scholars and teachers of literature have remained skeptical of myth criticism because of its tendencies toward the cultic and the occult.
Myth critics tend to forget that literature is more than a vehicle for archetypes and ritual patterns. In other words, they run the risk of being distracted from the aesthetic experience of the work itself. They forget that literature is, above all else, art.
Finally, there has been a discouraging confusion over concepts and definitions among the myth initiates themselves, which has caused many would-be myth critics to turn their energies to more clearly defined approaches such as the traditional or formalist.

To sum up, Archetypal criticism or myth criticism offers an unusual opportunity to enhance our literary appreciation and understanding.

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References

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Blamires, Harry. A History Of Literary Criticism. Macmillan India LTD 2000. Campbell, Joseph. The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology. New York: Viking, 1959.
Crane, Ronald S. Critics and Criticism: Ancient and Modern. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1952.
Das, B.B. and Mohanty J.M, Literary Criticism A Reading : Oxford University Press 2004
Eliade, Mircea. Myth and Reality. New York: Harpet, 1953.
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