theory and analysis

A GLOSSARY OF THE NEW CRITICISM

A LTHOUGH it is true, as John Crowe Ransom says in The

New Criticism, that "in depth and precision at once
it is beyond all earlier criticism in our language" and that
"it has already some unity of method," no attempt seems
to have been made to list and define the technical language
of the New Criticism. The following, which is indebted to
Ransom's central work, represents, therefore, a preliminary
effort at a glossary of some common terms, with the two
fold purpose of assisting readers, and of preparing the way
for a more or less accepted critical vocabulary and a more
orderly approach to the problems of poetic criticism.
Who are the New Critics? They are a body of philoso
phers, psychologists, critics, and poets, who, for philosophic
and semantic insight and analysis, and for ingenuity and
closeness in reading a poetic text, have scarcely been
equaled in our literature. The Father of the New Criticism
is probably I. A. Richards, who performed two functions:
(1) showed the necessity for considering the semantic
operation of poetry as a unique form of discourse, and (2)
in Practical Criticism, demonstrated the need for training,
even of advanced literary students, in the reading of a
poetic text. The Name-giver is Kenneth Burke, whose
brilliant abstraction helped classify techniques and forms
of literature; his primary concern, however, is not with
aesthetic judgment but with symbolism and symbolic action,
in general. The Apostle is Ransom, who has keenly refined
and consolidated the leading concepts, adding important

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ones of his own. The Prophet is Yvor Winters, who has

excellently analyzed and classified poetic structures, but
whose moral preoccupations pervade his aesthetic judg
ments. Cleanth Brooks is the Proselytizer in the Streets,
effectively spreading, with his former colleague, R. P. War
ren, the gospel of close textual analysis. William Empson,
a disciple of Richards, is the Dissector of Ambiguities, and
has probably performed the best job of practical criticism
in exposing the complex meanings of poetry. Eliot is the
Influence, whose general, rather than specific, effect is felt
by all the critics. And R. P. Blackmur and Allen Tate,
among others, independent critics of much sensitivity and
ability, apply the principles of the New Criticism in their
own ways.
Allowance should be made for the fluid way in which
some of the following terms are currently employed; and for
the fact that there are sharp cleavages among certain of the
critics, the "New Criticism" being a loose name for a con
stantly developing body of critical views. Delmore Schwartz
rightly impugns Tate's "defective and eclectic terminology,"
and Cleanth Brooks admits that he holds "no brief for these
terms as such. Perhaps they are inadequate. Perhaps they
are misleading. It is to be hoped in that case we can even
tually improve upon them." It is in that hope that this
initial, tentative attempt - which makes no claim to com
pleteness or adjudication - is offered. For helpful sugges
tions, I am indebted to Cleanth Brooks, George Dillon, and
Professor I. J. Kapstein of Brown University.

action, symbolic. The quality of a poem which, according to Burke,

distinguishes it from language as a means of information, as in science.
"For a poem is an act, the symbolic act of the poet who made it -

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 A GLOSSARY OF THE NEW CRITICISM (I)

an act of such a nature that, in surviving as a structure or object, it

enables us as readers to re-enact it" (Burke).
aesthetic distance. In Ransom, the necessary difference of artifice,
convention, and formality to which the artist submits his imitation
of reality. ". . . the direct approach is perilous to the artist, and may
be fatal . . . an art is usually, and probably -of necessity, a kind of
obliquity . . . its fixed form proposes to guarantee the round-about
of the artistic process, and the 'aesthetic distance.'" Form therefore
becomes a requirement beyond mere immediacy of imitation.
affective. Emotive and related to pleasure and pain, as distinguished
from the volitional and ideational aspects of consciousness.
affective fallacy. ". . . a confusion between the poem and its results
(what it is and what it does) . . . It begins by trying to derive the
standard of criticism from the psychological effects of the poem and
ends in impressionism and relativism. The result . .. is that the poem
itself, as an object of specifically critical judgment, tends to disappear."
(W. K. Wimsatt, Jr., and M. C. Beardsley, "The Affective Fallacy,"
to appear in The Sewanee Review, cited here through the kindness of
Professor Wimsatt and Mr. J. E. Palmer, editor of The Sewanee Re
view.) The affective fallacy is coupled with the intentional fallacy
(q.v.), the former being a confusion between the poem and its results,
the latter a confusion between the poem and its origins. Examples of
the affective fallacy range from Plato's feeding and watering of the
passions, Aristotle's counter-theory of catharsis, and the Longinian
"transport" of the audience, all of which may belong to the emotive
branch of affective criticism, to the physiological type of affective
criticism illustrated in the goose-flesh experience of Emily Dickinson
and the "shiver down the spine" of A. E. Housman.
ambiguity. Multiplicity of meanings in the poem, occurring when the
poem does not decide conclusively among them. "We call it ambigu
ous . . . when we recognize that there could be a puzzle as to what
the author meant, in that alternate views might be taken without
sheer misreading . . . An ambiguity, in ordinary speech, means some
thing very pronounced, and as a rule witty or deceitful. I propose to
use the word in an extended sense, and shall think relevant to my
subject any verbal nuance, however slight, which gives room for

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P OE T R Y

alternative reactions to the same piece of language" (Empson).

Empson's seven types of ambiguities are as follows:

(1) When a detail is effective in several ways at once, e.g., by

comparisons with several points of likeness, antitheses with
several points of difference, comparative adjectives, sub
dued metaphors, and extra meanings suggested by rhythm.
(2) When two or more alternative meanings are fully resolved
into one.
(3) When two apparently unconnected meanings are given
simultaneously.
(4) When the alternative meanings combine to make clear a
complicated state of mind in the author.
(5) When, by a fortunate confusion, the author is discovering
his idea in the act of writing, or not holding it all in mind
at once.
(6) When what is said is contradictory or irrelevant and the
reader is forced to invent interpretations.
(7) When a full contradiction occurs, marking a division in
the author's mind.
To illustrate the first type, a line from Shakespeare's Sonnet LXXIII
may be cited:
"Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang."

Empson enumerates the ways in which boughs may be choirs: they

are places in which to sing; they involve sitting in a row, they are
made of wood, carved into knots, etc.; they used to be surrounded
by a sheltering building crystallized out of the likeness of a forest,
and colored with stained glass and pointing like flowers and leaves;
they are now abandoned by all but the grey walls colored like the
skies of winter, etc.
argument. The paraphrasable idea of the poem.
attitude. (1) In Richards, the non-overt impulse to action involved
in the poetic experience of the reader. However, the poet's view
point towards the reader is, in Richards, synonymous with tone, q.v.)
He says that "it is in terms of attitude, the resolution, inter-animation,
and balancing of impulses - Aristotle's definition of Tragedy is an

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 A GLOSSARY OF THE NEW CRITICISM (1)

instance - that all the most valuable effects of poetry must be de

scribed . . . The much more subtle and elaborate impulses which the
poem excites . . . do not come out into the open, largely because
they are so complex. When they have adjusted themselves to one
another and become organized into a coherent whole, the needs con
cerned may be satisfied." (2) In Brooks and Warren, the ordinary
meaning of a position or point of view with regard to anything; the
poet's point of view in relation to his material and his reader. "The
tone of a poem indicates the poet's attitude towards his subject and
towards his audience." (Whereas, in Brooks and Warren, attitude
stands both for the poet's relationship to his reader and to his material,
Richards gives different names to these relationships: the first he
calls tone, q.v., and the second he calls feeling, q.v.) Furthermore,
for Brooks and Warren, attitude is also the reader's point of view.
attitudes, complex of. (Brooks) "In each case, the unifying prin
ciple of the organization which is the poem is an attitude or complex
of attitudes. We can discover, to be sure, propositions which seem to
characterize, more or less accurately, the unifying attitude." Brooks
warns, however (cf. paraphrase, heresy of), against identifying this
with the essence of the poem: "But if we take such propositions to
be the core of the poem we are contenting ourselves with reductions
and substitutions. To do this, is to take the root or the blossoms of
the trees for the tree itself." cf. attitude.
autotelic. Pert. to the poem having teleology or end-purpose in it
self; opposed to didactic, etc. cf. poetry, didactic view of.
belief, problem of. Whether the reader must share the poet's convic
tions in order fully to enjoy his poetry, a question which has much
agitated the New Critics. Brooks, as usual, presents the orthodox
view: "First, the scientific truth of the doctrine enunciated will not
save the poem, just as its scientific falsity will not damn it. The poet
then must not place an illegitimate dependence on the possible
scientific truth of his doctrine. As Tate puts it, the assertions made by
the poet must be 'a quality of the whole poem' - not 'willfully asserted
for the purpose of heightening a subject the poet has not implicitly
imagined.' Second, the doctrine must be one suitable to a poem
which is to stand up under 'an ironic contemplation.'" Consideration

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of the problem of belief was given impetus by Richards' dogma of

pseudo-statement, which he has since altered: poetry is composed of
assertions which are scientifically false, and therefore must strive to
reduce these unscientific beliefs to a minimum or to nothing at all.
Tate replied to Richards, saying: "But the statements in a genuine
work of art are neither 'certified' nor 'pseudo'; the creative intention
removes them from the domain of practicality . . . It is not what a
poet 'believes' (Mr. Richards' theory) but rather what total attitude
he takes towards all aspects of his conduct, tlhat constitutes the
'content' side of the aesthetic problem." According to Eliot (The Use
of Poetry): "When the doctrine, theory, belief, or 'view of life' pre
sented in a poem is one which the mind of the reader can accept as
coherent, mature, and founded on the facts of experience, it inter
poses no obstacle to the reader's enjoyment . . ."
cognitive. Pert. to the thought element of the poem, as opposed to
either the emotive or the conative (willing) elements.
coherence, grammatical. As contrasted with rational coherence, one
of Winters' structural methods of pseudo-reference, which occurs
when the former is present in excess of, or in the absence of, the
latter; that is to say, where there is little or no coherence of thought,
and the poem consequently suffers, except when the device is con
sciously employed in nonsense, as in Johnson's Alchemist:
"And so we may arrive by Talmud skill
And profane Greek to raise the building up
Of Helen's house against the Ismaelite,
King of Thogarma, and his habergeons
Brimstony, blue and fiery; and the force
Of King Abaddon, and the beast of Cittim;
Which Rabbi David Kimchi, Onkelos,
And Aben Ezra do interpret Rome."
coherence, rational. cf. coherence, grammatical.
communication, fallacy of. The use of poetic form to convey ideas
and feeling which could better be conveyed by scientific or some
other non-poetic discourse.
communication, heresy of. In Brooks, the false belief that the poem
communicates an idea or set of ideas with appropriate decorations to

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 A GLOSSARY OF THE NEW CRITICISM (I)

the reader, rather than that the poem itself is what is being communi
cated. (cf. paraphrase, heresy of; and distinguish from communica
tion, fallacy of.) "It is not that the poem communicates nothing.
Precisely the contrary. The poem communicates so much and com
municates it so richly and with such delicate qualifications that the
thing communicated is mauled and distorted if we attempt to convey
it by any vehicle less subtle than that of the poem itself." The poet
therefore does not simply communicate ideas to the reader. "To say
that Herrick 'communicates' certain matters to the reader tends to
falsity the real situation ... the poet is a maker, not a communicator.
He explores, consolidates, and 'forms' the total experience that is the
poem." The poem exists as an object. "This experience is com
municable, partially so, at least. If we are willing to use imaginative
understanding, we can come to know the poem as an object - we can
share in the experience. Buit the poet is most truthfully described as
a poietes or maker, not as an expositor or communicator."
complex of meaning. The composition of the poem, consisting of a
logical structure, q.v., and a texture, q.v.
conative. Pert. to the willing element of the poem. cf. cognitive;
attitude.
concentration. ". . . the concentration characteristic of poetry is a
result of a highly organized form. This concentration does not depend
on logical succinctness or on simplicity. Rather it depends on the
functional relationship existing among a number of complex factors,
rhythm, imagery, theme, etc." (Brooks and Warren). Related to
intensity, q.v.
concept. An idea, as contrasted with percept, a sense impression.
concrete universal. A concept, continuous in literary criticism, which
implies the paradoxical union in a poem of the concrete, specific, and
individual, together with the universal and general. The concrete
universal persists among the New Critics, as in Tate's tension, q.v.,
and Ransom's structure-texture, q.v. (Cf. W. K. Wimsatt, Jr., "The
Structure of the 'Concrete Universal' in Literature," PMLA, LXII,
March 1947. However, Wimsatt overlooks the fact that Ransom's
structure-texture concept, which Wimsatt considers a form of the
concrete universal, is directly antithetical to it. See Kenyon Review,
VI, 1944, 121.)

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control. The shaping of an experience in the poem.

control, spiritual. (Winters) The manifestation of the spiritual, or
moral, attitude of the poet evincing itself in the poem; opposed to the
conception of the poem as escape, whereby feeling is diverted from
action.
critical relativism, heresy of. Belief that aesthetic values are not in
strinsic to the poem, are not absolute, but shift according to the tastes
of the individual reader and his time (a view which is rejected by
the New Critics).
denotation, fallacy of. Occurs in "poetry which contradicts our most
developed human insights in so far as it fails to use and direct the
rich connotation with which language has been informed by ex
perience" (Tate).
denotatum. That to which the sign vehicle (q.v.) refers, if it exists
in physical space-time. (Cf. deiggnatum.)
density.- The quality added by metaphor and similar heterogeneous
detail to the poem to form its texture.
density, ontological. The quality of a crowded texture, which may
give the poem its "being," but which may detract, by virtue of the
resultant obscurity, from its logical clarity.
designatum. That to which the sign vehicle (q.v.) refers; if it exists
in physical space-time it is termed a denotatum.
didactic heresy. Cf. poetry, didactic view of.
emotion. In Richards, has two main features: "a diffused reaction in
the organs of the body brought about through the sympathetic system"
and "a tendency to action of some definite kind or groups of kinds."
Emotions, he says, are "primarily signs of attitudes" (q.v.) In con
sidering the poetic experience, many of the New Critics reject the
Romantic view that, as Tate says, "taught the reader to look for in
herently poetical objects, and to respond to them 'emotionally' in
certain prescribed ways, these ways being indicated by the 'truths'
interjected at intervals among the poetical objects . . . No idea is
more poetic than another until it is created in poetry; there are no
poetic ideas outside the poem." In general, then, the New Critics

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 A GLOSSARY OF THE NEW CRITICISM (I)

tend to oppose the Romantic idea that poetry is emotion, Tate attack
ing Winters' belief that poetry is a technique for dealing with ir
reducible emotions. Eliot sums the matter up when he says, "Not our
feelings, but the pattern which we make of our feelings is the centre
of value," and "Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion but an escape
from emotion."
emotive use of language. (Richards) Use of language for the sake
of effects in emotion and attitude produced by the reference it
occasions; contrasted with scientific use of language, i.e., for the sake
of the reference, true or false, which it causes.
exclusion, poetry of. Cf. poetry, Platonic; synthesis, poetry of.
expressive form, fallacy of. The principle whereby the form yields
to the raw material of the poem, the poet relinquishing his formal
obligation to the expression of his content. E.g., according to Winters,
Marianne Moore's (possibly ironic) Reinforcements:

"the future of time is determnined by

the power of volition"

a diffuse and relatively formless way of saying "volition determines

the future." Blackmur believes that poetry of the last hundred and
fifty years has been afflicted by the plague of expressive form: "When
you depend entirely upon the demon of inspiration, the inner voice,
the inner light, you deprive yourself of any external criterion to show
whether the demon is working or not. Because he is yours and you
wilfully depend on him, he will seem to be operating with equal
intensity at every level of imagination. That is the fallacy of the faith
in expressive form - the faith . . . that if a thing is only intensely
enough felt its mere expression in words will give it satisfactory form,
the dogma, in short, that once material becomes words it is its own
best form. By this stultifying fallacy you cannot ever know whether
your work succeeds or fails as integral poetry, can know only and
always that what you have said symbolizes and substitutes for your
experience to you, whatever it substitutes for in the minds of your
readers." Winters discusses it as follows: 'Form is expressive in.
variably of the state of mind of the author; a state of formlessness
is legitimate subject matter for literature, and in fact all subject matter,

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as such, is relatively formless; but the author must endeavor to give

form, or meaning, to the formless - in so far as he endeavors that
his own state of mind may imitate or approximate the condition of
the matter, he is surrendering to the matter instead of mastering it.
Form, in so far as it endeavors to imitate the formless, destroys
itself."
William Elton

(This is the first of three monthly installments.)

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS

AND ITS RELATION TO POETRY

(continued from November)

Since Freud's explorations and fantastic descriptions of

the Unconscious, the latter has been looked upon as a realm
of lurid twilights and mysteries, an inexhaustible mine of
material for all the arts including poetry. Few consider the
fact that in terms of conscious life-realization, the uncon
scious is a dead world, as dead as that state of sleep too
profound for dream-formation. The assertion made by
psychoanalysts that the dream state is an unconscious state
is as logical as the statement that this or that light is a
lightless one. (Of late some psychoanalysts have conceded
that the dream which can be recalled on awakening cannot
be considered unconscious.) The unconscious corresponds
to the vegetative level of life. It consists of groups of
nerves (engrams; complexes) which are interconnected by
inherited or acquired bonds. When stimulated directly or
via associations, the entire complex acts as a unit with the

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