A Study on the Text in Anglo―American New Criticism.docVIP

A Study on the Text in Anglo―American New Criticism 　　【Abstract】This paper aims to make a systematic study of text in New Criticism. Firstly， it explores the formation of the text-centered characteristic of New Criticism. Then this paper points out that Tension is ranked as the most outstanding theory in terms of text composition. When it comes to analyze a specific text， “close reading” is recommended by the New Critics as the best way. 【Key words】text； New Criticism； tension； close reading The historical development and the formation of text-centered literature criticism From 1920s to 1950s， this is an age of Objective orientation with Anglo-American as its representative. This objective orientation was just beginning to emerge in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The aim to consider a poem as Poe expressed it， is a “Poem per se ….written solely for the poems sake” in isolation from external causes came to constitute one element of the diverse doctrines usually huddled together by historians under the heading “Art for Arts Sake”. T.S. Eliot’s dictum of 1928， that when we are considering poetry we must consider it primarily as poetry and not another thing is widely approved， and this ideal is often joined with Macheishs verse aphorism， “A poem should not mean but be”. In Abrams opinion， the West did not pay enough attention to the text until the 1920s， while on the whole it is true， it should be point out that the privilege of text did not come abruptly in the twentieth century， in contrast， its origin can be dated back to the ancient Greece. Aristotle is the first most important figure who advocates that the artistic works should be taken as an organic whole. Aristotle states that a beautiful object， whether it be a living organism or any whole composed of parts， must not only have an orderly arrangement of parts， but must also be of a certain magnitude； for beauty depends on magnitude and order. This idea is very much in line with