Brittany Davis

Final Paper

Seminar in Literary Criticism

Fall, 1998

New Criticism and Marxist Literary Criticism:

Currents, Trends, Structures, Formations, and Complications

The study of English language literature changed drastically in the years following the First World War. Shifts in the concept of the purposes and cultural usefulness of English literature which had begun in the Victorian era came to fruition in the early 20th Century, resulting in the privileging of recognized works of literature where, before that point, works of English literature were considered little worth studying. The emerging recognizable cannon of English language literature was given special status over other examples and forms of writing, and the recognition and study of these forms became instrumental in the formations of significant literary critical movement devoted to their study. The privileged position of the canonical forms was entrenched by the fact that the dominant forms of criticism reciprocated that privilege by being founded on the study of recognizable forms such as the novel and certain structures of poetry, perpetuating those forms as legitimate structures of literature. the notion of privileged texts and esthetically correct linguistic usage and forms came to prominence with the emergence of Post World War I Modernism. the changed aesthetic structure coup;led with the rise of the study of English led to the formation of the �New Criticism� and its primary reactive opposite in terms of critical debate Marxist literary criticism, both forms existing in a parallel history of changing power structures and political agendas which span decades and vast shifts in the course of literary criticism and theory.

The two forms of criticism emerged at similar points in history but along seemingly divergent lines. New Criticism played extensively on the privileged position of literature, declaring that the literary text (most often referred to as �the poem�) was divorced from its author beyond the techniques which the poet had used to create it and contained elements which further transcended any of the circumstances of its composition. In direct opposition to these theories, Marxist literary criticism focuses on the means of production of a work of writing and also the social values and biases of which the content, themes, and form of a work were representative. New Criticism emerged between the wars as a recognizable movement but became the dominant mode of teaching and discussing literature in American and British universities in the 1950�s, continually shadowed by Marxist criticism which provided, often at the expense of its own development, a critical counterpoint to the strictly asocial focus of New Criticism.

the idea of selecting certain pieces of writing and declaring them part of a culturally significant, prescriptive literature did not emerge with the New Critics. Non-English language and classical literatures had already enjoyed a certain status i universities, and the study of literature in English was considered practically useless (Eagleton �The Rise of English� 18). the social upheavals of the economic changes in the Victorian age coupled with a distinct British patriotism based on the imperialistic urge brought on a series of debates over the nature and importance of the pursuit of culture with poet and critic Matthew Arnold at the forefront. Arnold declared that culture was �the study of perfection� (45) and proposed the placement of culture -- art, music, and, especially, literature, which by virtue of its nonclassically educated intended audience would be specifically English literature -- at the center of British society. Religion was too insular and divorced from the true needs of internal goodness of individuals to be of true use in creating a better, more stable society (47). Arnold suggested that culture and its attending preoccupations with perfection was �the great help out of our [meaning Victorian England�s] present difficulties� (6). While the New Critics would use Arnold�s definition of literature as a foundational point for their privileged position of literature over types of writing, the importance of culture as a stabilizing (or even controlling) force in society was one of the concerns of the Marxist literary critics whose rise shadowed the rise of the New Critics in the early decades of the Twentieth century.

Arnold�s definitions of culture gave the New Critics a cultural vocabulary of form and theme which allowed them to discern and raise from mass of non-cultural, nonliterary writing a specific body of works. New Critics created an aesthetic practice of the selection of specifically artistic texts which mirrors Matthew Arnold�s own view of the �touchstones� of literature: passages of writing which were universally and classically good. Arnold;�s dependence on these �touchstones� was faulty, however, as he idealized specific lines from specific works to the point that touchstones became recipes for formulaic poems modeled on them instead of new, creative work (Wimsatt and Brooks 445).

In the 1020�s, T.S. Eliot wrote several piecers of literary criticism which became the formational texts of New Criticism. In a move which mirrored the New Critics� dual embrace of artistic creativity and socially conservative ideas of art itself, Eliot discarded the idea of tradition as a static system. To Eliot, the most traditional works of art were those which set out to challenge traditional aspects of art. Only writing that tried to reject traditional elements of art were able to actually reconfigure and recombine traditional elements into a new form of art that was worthy of being included into the larger body of tradition (�Tradition and the Individual Talent� 5).

It was Eliot�s delineation of the focus that a critic should have when approaching a piece of work, however, that set New Criticism apart from the forms of criticism which preceded and surrounded it. Unlike other critics who emphasized the person of the poet to the point that the actual work was less important biographical speculations, Eliot recognized the importance of the work of the poet but effectively severed the tie between the worth of the poem and the idea of the poet as a creative individual.

... the poet has not a �personality� to express but a particular medium, which is only a medium and not a personality, in which impressions and experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways. (9)

this idea corresponds almost entirely with the ideas of I.A. Richards, another critic whose work formed the foundation of New Criticism. Richards concerned himself more with powers of perception and creation which distinguished a poet from someone who is not a poet. A poet, according to Richards, had the ability to clearly sort out the impressions of the past and to recount them without the inclusion of �irrelevant personal details and accidents� (180) while still remaining within the bounds of �normalcy�, allowing the work of the poet to be accessible by the person who did not share these abilities (190).

In terms of New Criticism, Richards is useful because he worked to create a definitive discussion about the status of art and the qualities of �good� art. The emphasis placed on Richards� concept of �synthaesis� in the New Critical work Literary Criticism: A Short History stresses the importance of this concept in allowing the separations between context and content and the writer and the work of literature which was an essential facet of the New Criticism. Richards� introduced synthaesis as a sort of dialectical relationship which existed within good pieces of writing. the opposing aspects contained within a work were harmonized by the structure of a successful work. In a good work of art, the tension between opposing concepts in a work were harmonized a successful energy (Wimsatt and Brooks 616).

the foundational texts of New Criticism by T.S. Eliot and I.A. Richards both emphasized the power of the body of art to absorb within itself elements of resistance and conflict. From

synthaesis to Eliot�s idea of the subsumation of tradition-resistant art into the body of all art which the new art was originally intended to reject, the passage of individual works of literature into the unity of literature as a whole as seen by the New Critics actually relied on a system of heirarchized oppositions. The binary oppositional structure of the major ideas of New Criticism are all elaborations on the initial New Critical supposition of �good� and �bad� writing. All of the judgments of the New Critics rely on the basic fact that all of the debates of New Criticism from the distinction of the universal from the personal to the valuing of the form over the content (and, in turn, the content over the context of the creative process) are based and resolved on assigning of the quality of �good� to one of the sides of comparable values and the quality of �bad� to the other. forms of criticism such as Marxism literary criticism which rose at the same time as New Criticism were dealt with in similar ways, with the dominant position of New Criticism refiguring any criticisms founded on lines which opposed New Criticism in terms of their invalidity with regard to the the strictures of New Criticism itself.

new Criticism as a movement is most recognizable as a method of teaching which dominated colleges and universities first in the United States and then in Britain during the 1950�s and 1960�s especially. understanding Poetry ( ) and An Approach to Literature (1939) were not only works which clearly established New Critical priorities and methods of reading, they also served as standard college texts which collected a range of poetical and prose works and arranged them in a form which highlighted new Critical emphasis on form, theme, and style. the texts contained works which were traditionally canonical as well as works that were contemporary to the time period in which they were originally produced. The texts began with essays which explained in terms palatable to the uninitiated students the purpose of reading and storytelling and the major technical and thematic tools -- such as symbolism, mood, form, character, and plot -- which were used by writers to tell stories. Following each work, the critic editors of the texts would provide a short analysis of the poem which adhered strictly to the focus which the selected poem had been chosen to illustrate ignoring in turn aspects of the literary texts which were irrelevant to the focus analysis of the poem to the point that the descriptions of the poems in these short summaries rendered the poems themselves unrecognizable. thus, a poem like Langston Hughes� �Ku Klux� which describes a racially motivated attack on the poem;s black narrator is a poem which is significant because of its �natural colloquial quality of the language and rhythm� (Approach to Literature 375).

This central tenet of new Criticism, the study of pieces of literature at a complete remove from the circumstances of their composition, which most sets Marxist literary criticism at odds with the new Criticism. Marxist literary criticism is intimately concerned with the modes of production of literature and of the accompanying literary criticism (Eagleton Marxism and Literary Criticism 2). Marxist literary critics believe that the circumstances of a work inevitably mark that work in some intrinsic way and that even the New Critics� supposedly objective aesthetics are the result of a very specific political or social privileging of one standard of evaluation over another. Marxist literary criticism has its roots in the 19th Century with the writings of Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels and their social theories of the production of all goods and the distribution of power between the social classes.

The production of works of works of literature was equated directly by Marxist critics to the ideology of the people by which it was produced. Ideology is defined simply as the structure of power of a society which is made visible through the standards, actions,m and practices of society (Eagleton Marxism and Literary Criticism 5). Ideas of form and the structure of literature are considered almost incidental and are applicable only in that they are revelatory of the ideologies which produce them. Most important in Marxist literary criticism is the interaction of class and the economics of the class system which effects the way the works are produces, who produces texts, and the values and views espoused by texts which have passed through the system of textual production. Earlier Marxist critics were concerned mostly with a simplistic dissection of works to see if they fit their ideas of political and economic awareness. Marxist critics later became more preoccupied with theoretical ideas such as George Lukacks who applied Marxist ideals to the study of form (Eagleton Marxism and Literary Criticism 29) and Walter Benjamin whose works concerning the modern production system and its effects on the arts are central to Marxist literary theory.

the apparent separation of practice between Marxist literary criticism and the New Criticism does not necessarily mean that there was not interaction between the two, however. the years between the two World Wars were a scintillating time for criticism as new forms of writing and new theories of the use of language emerged and in the immediate post-WWI years and sparked new forms of criticism to go with them. While the majority of the concerns that New Critics and Marxist critics had with each other were attempts to discredit the bases for each other�s approaches to literature, that was not always the case. One of the most frequently cited instances of the juxtaposition of New Critical aesthetics with Marxist thought was the case of the Partisan review whose editors (including Lionel Trilling) relaunched their journal in 1937 as an anti-Stalinist publication which looked upon literature with a Marxist social orientation but rejected the idea of literature as propaganda (Samet 130). Taking their cues from T.S. Eliot�s influential literary criticism much as the new Critics had, the Partisan Review�s editors believed that the artistic merit and the emotional quality of a work were just as important as the relation of that work to the process of production (Teres 76).

Partisan Reveiw-era Marxist criticism, while not differing vastly from New Criticism in its views of aesthetics, was important because it provided an alternative forum where aesthetics were still important but social concerns which were not address by the New Critics could also enter in the discussion. This was a relatively short-lived trend, however, with the tendency of Marxist critics to distrust the formation of systems of judging aesthetic merit growing into a darker, more pessimistic style of criticism by the 1970�s. The position of Marxist criticism, cemented by the practices of the partisan Review, became a sort of permanent opposition to the New Critics� rejection of any direct political assessment of literature. Marxist criticism passed from an independent and creative �protocol of exemption� to a �protocol of complicity� (Samet 135). the opposition of Marxist critics to the New Critics eventually became part of the power structures of New Criticism and Marxist criticism alike. The reactionary structures which Marxist criticism ac quired resulted in a critical method which, if while keeping Marxism at the central position of criticism by its direct counter-position to the dominance of New Criticism, was remote from the defining structures of priority within literary scholarship. the Marxist critical practice became less a viable alternative and served simply to underpin the New Criticism, giving its theories credence by contrast with Marxism and underpinning the structures of New Criticism.

the pattern of response between the two forms of criticism was important to their continuation, however, within the forum of critical debate. This interaction did not take place entirely within the scope of Marxist resistance or concession to idea of New Criticism. Before the advent of cultural studies, F. R. Leavis was most frequently associated with the New Criticism because of his strict delineation of the purpose of aesthetics. Leavis� theories, actually are much closer to those of Matthew Arnold with his idea of literature as a forum where the noblest discussions of society take place (Eagleton �The Rise of English� 50). Like most New Critics, Leavis dismissed the Marxist literary critics� concerns as a simplistic reduction of all literature to �doctrine, strategy and tactics of the Class War� (5). Leavis found Marxist thought compelling enough that he explored aspects of it before rejecting its tenets and still regarded Leon Trotsky as �dangerously intelligent� despite his own disregard for Trotsky�s works of literary theory (167). Leavis was concerned enough with Marxist literary concerns that he frequently addressed them in his journal scrutiny, and Leavis prefaced a collected volume of his most famous Scrutiny essays with an essay entitled �Marxism and Cultural Continuity.�

While Leavis� responses and rejection of Marxism were consistently derogatory, his disavowals of Marxist concerns in the field of literary criticism were more substantial than the generally off-hand dismissals of Marxist priorities which generally came from New Criticism. Already in a position where new Critics considered the economic and social concerns of the Marxist critics as inappropriate to the study of literature, Marxist critics were often accused of being in league with the goals of the Soviet regime. While this was a politically dangerous position in which to be situated, the Marxist critics were further undermined by the inferior quality of Soviet-sponsored art and the Soviet hostility to new forms of art to which the Marxist critics were also linked by virtue of their theoretical antecedents in Marx�s writing.

Falling back on the standard rejection of Marxist criticism, American New Critics and critical historians William K. Wimsatt and Cleanth Brooks attributed the rise of Marxist criticism to the need of communist regimes to destroy �art for art�s sale� and to �see art only in terms of its use as propaganda� (468). According to the New Criticism, the ideas of Marxist critics were anti-literary and failed to produce even new methods of perspectives for the examination of art.

�The professional literary student will scarcely be horrified by the bourgeois origin of a given literature; he is not likely to evaluate writing to the degree of their integration into a totalitarian process, .... Yet the Marxist program for literature ... is able to take its place with some comfort as an application of the historical idea which purely literary scholars ... have worked out so successfully, for their own purposes, during the past 200 years. (Wimsatt and Brooks 469)

By associating Marxist literary criticism with general social concerns and Marxist movements which were not literary in nature, the New Criticism were able to further dismiss the Marxist critical ideas within the bounds of new Critical standards for literary study:

Marxism and the forms of social criticism most closely related to it have never had any real concern with literature and literary problems. (Wimsatt and Brooks 471)

And more scathing still:

... the socio-realistic tradition of literary criticism has on the whole contributed little to an understanding of the relation which universality bears to individuality in artistic expression.� (473)

the New Critics relied on these dismissals of Marxism based on their own literary priorities which Marxist literary critics called into question out of their principle of distrust of the �universality� which was conveniently devised by the dominant classes in society.

Despite the fact that the New Criticism took great care to situate themselves and their ideas at a theoretical position far from the concerns of Marxist literary critics, the whole history of the development and popularity of the New Criticism is branded with a Marxist interpretation. Because of the relative unconcern with the political and historical meanings of events surrounding literature, Marxists and cultural critics with Marxist leanings have been responsible for recording the reasons for the overwhelming success of the New Criticism within American and British colleges and universities, giving interpretations of that history with decidedly politicized and often negative overtones.

The popular methods of New Criticism which did not require an extensive background in literature in order to participate are linked by British Marxist critic Peter Eagleton to Matthew Arnold�s theory of cultural pacification of the working classes through study of English literature. English was first studied in England at workingman�s institutes which provided the largely uneducated working classes with access to cultural indoctrination disguised as education (�The Rise of English� 47). Likewise, the phenomenal rise to popularity of New Criticism in the years following the Second World War are not seen as the result of a critical awakening which made the population receptive to New Critical ideas but the result of the passage of the GI bill which created a great demand for college classes for veterans of the war who were entering the higher education system for the first time (Samet 127). again, the texts which the New Critics wrote themselves An Approach to Literature and Understanding Poetry were ideal for this situation because a background in the classic or a traditional college preparatory education was not required to make sense of the methods and concepts presented in the books. The New Criticism represented also a deliberate withdrawal of the university community from the dangerous world of Cold War politics at a time when any leftist affiliations or contacts with Marxism was dangerous to reputations and careers.

While the highly available form of education provided by New Criticism seems as though it would be in keeping with the Marxist agenda of providing access to education for the lower classes, the foundational conflicts of new Criticism and Marxist literary thought made the dominance of new Criticism highly problematic. In the first place, the very oppositional structure of Marxism made it only natural that the dominant position would be questioned by Marxist-oriented critics. The inherently hierarchical structure of new Criticism could not be conducive to a method of education designed to erase those hierarchies which Marxism opposed. It was the supposed objectivity of the New Critics� aesthetic standards which Marxist criticism most vehemently opposed. Aesthetic standards, to a Marxist critic were always the result of the preferences of the dominant classes of society imposing their own standards of worth on the rest of society. the fascist leanings of the promoters of early New Criticism (such as T.S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence) were called the supposed apolitical establishment and universal orientations of New Critical aesthetics into question (Eagleton). Marxist theorists posited the idea that any movement which claimed its own established objectivity inherently tended to be associated with right wing political movements (Kenshur 335). New Criticism was established first on a strictly hierarchical idea of the aesthetics of content and form which directed all of its relations to other forms of criticism as well. The establishment of the aesthetic truths which comprised New Criticism were so severely delineated as to eliminate any opposition to itself through the simplicity of its definition of anything lying outside of its own concerns was by non-literary and therefore had no place in valid academic study.

The main contention between the new Criticism and Marxist literary criticism is not the result so much of differing practices and incidental details of the function of art and the qualities of aesthetics but of the intimate concern each of the two forms of criticism has with the position of the middle classes.