Ohio University Press, 2008 eISBN: 978-0-8040-4033-4 | Cloth: 978-0-8040-1108-2 | Paper: 978-0-8040-1109-9 Library of Congress Classification PS79.P73 2008 Dewey Decimal Classification 801.950973
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Marked by a rigorously close textual reading, detached from
biographical or other extratextual material, New Criticism was the
dominant literary theory of the mid-twentieth century. Since that
time, schools of literary criticism have arisen in support of or in opposition to
the approach advocated by the New Critics. Nonetheless, the theory remains
one of the most important sources for groundbreaking criticism and continues
to be a controversial approach to reading literature. Praising It New is the first anthology of New Criticism to be printed in fifty
years. It includes important essays by such influential poets and critics as
T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Yvor Winters,
Cleanth Brooks, R. P. Blackmur, W. K. Wimsatt, and Robert Penn Warren.
Together, these authors ushered in the modernist age of poetry and criticism
and transformed the teaching of literature in the schools. As the American
poet and critic Randall Jarrell once noted: “I do not believe there has been another
age in which so much extraordinarily good criticism of poetry has
been written.”
This anthology now makes much of the best American poetry criticism available
again, and includes short biographies and selected bibliographies of its
chief figures. Praising It New is the perfect introduction for students to the
best American poetry criticism of the twentieth century.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Garrick Davis is the founding editor of the Contemporary
Poetry Review, the largest online archive of poetry criticism in the world (cprw.com). His poetry
and criticism have appeared in the New Criterion, Verse, the Weekly Standard,McSweeney’s, and the New
York Sun. He also edited Child of the Ocmulgee: the Selected
Poems of Freda Quenneville. He is the literature
specialist of the National Endowment for the Arts in
Washington DC.
REVIEWS
“Given our long-term disregard of the New Criticism, Davis‘s compendium is especially welcome.... Davis provides richly informative, well-argued, and elegantly styled introductions, head-notes, and annotations, as well as discriminating suggestions for further reading.”
— Virginia Quarterly Review
“In Praising It New: The Best of the New Criticism, Garrick Davis offers poets and students an exceptionally well chosen selection from the theoretical essays of the New Criticism in hopes that it will remain an available influence. They are far more interesting than such essays generally tend to be—a strength of the best of the New Critics and one that will continue to serve them well with both an academic and a general audience.”
— Eclectica Magazine
“This anthology is both important and necessary. No other collection gives us such an excellent opportunity to go back to the New Criticism and see it again, as if for the first time.”
— Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
William Logan: Forward into the Past: Reading the New Critics 000
Acknowledgments 000
A Note on the Editor's Method of Selection 000
Garrick Davis: Introduction: The Golden Age of Poetry Criticism 000
Part 1: Where to Begin? 1 [or 3?]
The Ideal Approach to Criticism
T. S. Eliot: Introduction to The Sacred Wood 000
T. S. Eliot: The Perfect Critic 000
The New Syllabus
Ezra Pound: How to Read 000
Against the Historical Method
Allen Tate: Miss Emily and the Bibliographer 000
Teaching Literary Criticism
John Crowe Ransom: Criticism, Inc. 000
Allen Tate: Is Literary Criticism Possible? 000
Part 2: The New Criticism 000
First Principles
Yvor Winters: Preliminary Problems 000
Cleanth Brooks: The Formalist Critics 000
Against the Fallacies
W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley: The Affective Fallacy 000
W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley: The Intentional Fallacy 000
The Purity of Poetry
R. P. Warren: Pure and Impure Poetry 000
The Objective Correlative
T. S. Eliot: Hamlet and His Problems 000
The Dissociation of Sensibility
T. S. Eliot: The Metaphysical Poets 000
Delmore Schwartz: The Isolation of Modern Poetry 000
Close Reading
Randall Jarrell: Texts from Housman 000
Hugh Kenner: Some Post-Symbolist Structures 000
Part 3: Techniques and Truths 000
Breaking the Pentameter
Ezra Pound: A Retrospect 000
T. S Eliot: Reflections on Vers Libre 000
Making It New
John Crowe Ransom: Poets without Laurels 000
Randall Jarrell: The End of the Line 000
J. V. Cunningham: The Problem of Form 000
Poetry as a Moral Discipline
Yvor Winters: Foreword to Primitivism and Decadence 000
Yvor Winters: The Morality of Poetry 000
Part 4: Appraising Poets and Periods 000
The Correction of Taste
Cleanth Brooks: T. S. Eliot: Thinker and Artist 000
R. P. Blackmur: Religious Poetry in the United States 000
Kenneth Burke: Towards a Post-Kantian Verbal Music" 000
Coda 000
R. P. Blackmur: Lord Tennyson's Scissors: 1912/1950 000
Appendix: Selected Biographies and Bibliographies 000
Source Credits 000
Ohio University Press, 2008 eISBN: 978-0-8040-4033-4 Cloth: 978-0-8040-1108-2 Paper: 978-0-8040-1109-9
Marked by a rigorously close textual reading, detached from
biographical or other extratextual material, New Criticism was the
dominant literary theory of the mid-twentieth century. Since that
time, schools of literary criticism have arisen in support of or in opposition to
the approach advocated by the New Critics. Nonetheless, the theory remains
one of the most important sources for groundbreaking criticism and continues
to be a controversial approach to reading literature. Praising It New is the first anthology of New Criticism to be printed in fifty
years. It includes important essays by such influential poets and critics as
T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Yvor Winters,
Cleanth Brooks, R. P. Blackmur, W. K. Wimsatt, and Robert Penn Warren.
Together, these authors ushered in the modernist age of poetry and criticism
and transformed the teaching of literature in the schools. As the American
poet and critic Randall Jarrell once noted: “I do not believe there has been another
age in which so much extraordinarily good criticism of poetry has
been written.”
This anthology now makes much of the best American poetry criticism available
again, and includes short biographies and selected bibliographies of its
chief figures. Praising It New is the perfect introduction for students to the
best American poetry criticism of the twentieth century.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Garrick Davis is the founding editor of the Contemporary
Poetry Review, the largest online archive of poetry criticism in the world (cprw.com). His poetry
and criticism have appeared in the New Criterion, Verse, the Weekly Standard,McSweeney’s, and the New
York Sun. He also edited Child of the Ocmulgee: the Selected
Poems of Freda Quenneville. He is the literature
specialist of the National Endowment for the Arts in
Washington DC.
REVIEWS
“Given our long-term disregard of the New Criticism, Davis‘s compendium is especially welcome.... Davis provides richly informative, well-argued, and elegantly styled introductions, head-notes, and annotations, as well as discriminating suggestions for further reading.”
— Virginia Quarterly Review
“In Praising It New: The Best of the New Criticism, Garrick Davis offers poets and students an exceptionally well chosen selection from the theoretical essays of the New Criticism in hopes that it will remain an available influence. They are far more interesting than such essays generally tend to be—a strength of the best of the New Critics and one that will continue to serve them well with both an academic and a general audience.”
— Eclectica Magazine
“This anthology is both important and necessary. No other collection gives us such an excellent opportunity to go back to the New Criticism and see it again, as if for the first time.”
— Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
William Logan: Forward into the Past: Reading the New Critics 000
Acknowledgments 000
A Note on the Editor's Method of Selection 000
Garrick Davis: Introduction: The Golden Age of Poetry Criticism 000
Part 1: Where to Begin? 1 [or 3?]
The Ideal Approach to Criticism
T. S. Eliot: Introduction to The Sacred Wood 000
T. S. Eliot: The Perfect Critic 000
The New Syllabus
Ezra Pound: How to Read 000
Against the Historical Method
Allen Tate: Miss Emily and the Bibliographer 000
Teaching Literary Criticism
John Crowe Ransom: Criticism, Inc. 000
Allen Tate: Is Literary Criticism Possible? 000
Part 2: The New Criticism 000
First Principles
Yvor Winters: Preliminary Problems 000
Cleanth Brooks: The Formalist Critics 000
Against the Fallacies
W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley: The Affective Fallacy 000
W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley: The Intentional Fallacy 000
The Purity of Poetry
R. P. Warren: Pure and Impure Poetry 000
The Objective Correlative
T. S. Eliot: Hamlet and His Problems 000
The Dissociation of Sensibility
T. S. Eliot: The Metaphysical Poets 000
Delmore Schwartz: The Isolation of Modern Poetry 000
Close Reading
Randall Jarrell: Texts from Housman 000
Hugh Kenner: Some Post-Symbolist Structures 000
Part 3: Techniques and Truths 000
Breaking the Pentameter
Ezra Pound: A Retrospect 000
T. S Eliot: Reflections on Vers Libre 000
Making It New
John Crowe Ransom: Poets without Laurels 000
Randall Jarrell: The End of the Line 000
J. V. Cunningham: The Problem of Form 000
Poetry as a Moral Discipline
Yvor Winters: Foreword to Primitivism and Decadence 000
Yvor Winters: The Morality of Poetry 000
Part 4: Appraising Poets and Periods 000
The Correction of Taste
Cleanth Brooks: T. S. Eliot: Thinker and Artist 000
R. P. Blackmur: Religious Poetry in the United States 000
Kenneth Burke: Towards a Post-Kantian Verbal Music" 000
Coda 000
R. P. Blackmur: Lord Tennyson's Scissors: 1912/1950 000
Appendix: Selected Biographies and Bibliographies 000
Source Credits 000
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC