The Foundations of Formalism

The nature of criticism has been a matter of debate for centuries, dealing with literature and its effect on the human mind and emotions. Early in the twentieth century, a group of critics formed to bring criticism to, what they presumed, its purest form. The new criticism, or formalism, wanted to deal with purely the text of a work and none of the other details that went into the creation of the text. Be it the author or the reader, all these points were irrelevant in the critique of a text. Strict definition and analysis of a text, without involvement of the author or reader reaction, is the only way to completely critique the text objectively.

John Crowe Ransom was a leading advocate of Formalism, took steps to create many of the rules, and helped to implement this new theory of criticism. In this theory, a critic should only base the extrapolation of a text on the text itself. Other outside influences serve to taint the overall impression of the poem, taking the critique of the poem and changing it into something wholly different. A defining point of New Criticism, Ransom feels that each criticism should be critical and exact, always relating only to the text.

Ransom calls for broad changes to be made within the English department before the ideals of New Criticism can take place. The practice of criticism should become its own autonomous academic discipline. The English department is concerned with the process of literature, history, and other such pursuits to define literature. These principles help only to define literature as a whole, not giving any detail to specific texts. Criticism should only be based on the text at hand and none of the aspects of the English department that will take attention from the text itself.

The first rule set by Ransom is the expulsion of the subjective viewpoint of the critic as a reader. "It shall be objective, shall cite the nature of the object rather than its effects upon the subject" (Ransom, 1115). Here Ransom is emphasizing the importance of staying within the text. Too often the critic will place their own feelings into their analysis of the text. When this occurs, the critic strays from criticism and enters the state of personal reflection. In this state the critics are merely concerned with their own feelings.

Secondly, Ransom expunges the idea of synopsis and paraphrase. He simply does not want the critique to turn into a book report. The main ideas of the content of the text must be given full attention, not just what happened in the text. "He does not consider the plot or story as identical with the real content. Plot is an abstract from the content" (Ransom 1116).

Ransom, with the third rule, also calls for the expulsion of history. "This includes studies of the general literary background; author's biography, of course with special reference to autobiographical evidences in the work itself" (Ransom 1116). When the critic takes to history, he or she begins to stray from criticism into the realm of historical analysis. The person can become too mired in the background of the author, and just what part may be an allusion to a section in the life of the author. However, Ransom does not disown the entire notion of history being involved in a critique. The critic should be well versed in the history around the text, but the history should not be the single focus of the critique.

The same caution of the third rule is applied to the fourth. Linguistic studies are "those studies which define the meaning of unusual words and idioms, including the foreign and archaic ones, and identify allusions" (Ransom 1116). The understanding and application of linguistics to a text helps but a critic should not become mired in linguistics. If the critic does, then the critique becomes a paper on linguistics and is no longer about the text being analyzed.

The most abstract of the ideals to be expulsed is in the fifth rule, the expulsion of moral studies. "The moral standard applied is the one appropriate to the reviewer" (Ransom 1116). Just like the first rule, when applying his moral code to the review it ceases to be objective and becomes shaded by the thoughts of the reviewer. Moral studies also need to be expunged from critical analysis because they will alienate texts that have value. Ransom's definition of criticism does not mix with moral studies. "Criticism is the attempt to define and enjoy the aesthetic or characteristic values of literature" (Ransom 1110). A humanist will argue with this definition on the basis of the aesthetic values of a text. Certain aesthetic values may cause friction for the humanist and they will reject a text based on the disagreement with moral values.

With these ideals in mind, a critic should more easily be able to define and review a text based on its own merit, and not the merit of any outside influence. These rules help because Ransom feels that professors are learned men but they have no idea of how to be critical. "Criticism must become more scientific, or precise and systematic" (Ransom 1109). Not to say that the study needs to be staunch and rigid, but the boundaries of criticism should be clearly defined. Just like the studies of art, literature should have technical studies into the technique of poetry. These techniques include style and poetic devices. The devices and style help to define the aesthetics of a poem.

Cleanth Brooks continues the definition and explanation of Formalist ideals with The Formalist Critics. The critic here is defined in much the same way as Ransom defined him or her. Brooks takes the ideas a step further, making Formalist study more precise. His definition of criticism is more precise, "literary criticism is a description and an evaluation of its object" (Brooks 1366). Unlike Ransom's definition, Brooks' leaves no room for potential subjective feelings in criticism. Ransom feels a critic needs to enjoy the aesthetics of a text. This can lead to a subjective review as the reviewer may focus on a single aesthetic or characteristic too much and ignore others that have just as much validity.

The process of criticism is more scientific, with a clearer explanation of what a critic needs to keep in mind when reviewing.

The primary concern of criticism is with the problem of unity - the kind of whole which the literary work forms or fails to form, and the relation of the various parts to each other in building up this whole. (Brooks 1366)

Brooks states that the values, be they aesthetic or characteristic, play a larger part in the whole of a text. The different values need to connect and interplay with one another for the text to work. No longer should the critic be concerned with individual parts, and whether one is better than the other, but that it work with all other values. This leads to Brooks' idea of a central focus a critic needs to review a text.

Like Ransom, Brooks feels a pure criticism can only come from the text itself and nothing else. Severing the text from both the author and the reader is the way to truly critique a work. "The Formalist critic knows as well as anyone that poems and plays and novels are written by men...and that they are written from all sorts of motives" (Brooks 1367). Being too involved in thinking about why an author wrote what he or she did is not criticism it is psychology. The Formalist critic should keep steadfast attention to the work itself and nothing else. Biography and psychology of an author should not be confused with criticism. Both of these pursuits only serve to explain the way a poem or play was written, not the intention or meaning of that play or poem.

For Brooks, a critic need know less than what Ransom suggests and should also focus more intensely.

The formalist critic, because he wants to criticize the work itself, makes two assumptions; (1) he assumes that the relevant part of the author's intention is what he got actually into his work; that is, he assumes that the author's intention as realized is the 'intention' that counts. (Brooks 1367)

This assumption releases the critic from any connection to the author. If the critic dwells on what the author may have thought or just what intention he intended to put in, besides the intention already realized within the text, the critic strays to psychology. The critic will have to interact with the author to understand what that intention may have been. If that is the case, the critic then becomes a reader, and when he becomes a reader, his critique ceases to be objective. The critic will begin to agree or disagree with the intention in the text, as his or her perceptions will have been shaped by the author's intended and unrealized intentions. This also leads to multiple readings of a single text.

And (2) the formalist critic assumes an ideal reader: that is, instead of focusing on the varying spectrum of possible readings, attempts to find a central point of reference from which he can focus upon the structure of the poem or novel. (Brooks 1367-1368)

Instead of biography or psychology the critic can become lost in the multitude of readings that a text can offer. These other readings can overtake a review without coming to an end and giving a definitive meaning to the work. This encompasses the claims made by Ransom against linguistic and historical studies. With the knowledge and application of these studies, the critic will only deal with these studies. In the case of linguistics this is especially so; words have a multitude of meanings that can change the interpretation of a text with each different meaning. A critic may spend the whole of the review trying to explain all the meanings the text may hold, but this will only allow the critic to comment on the potential of the text, not what it actually accomplishes.

Brooks states that the critic can only do one of two things when he or she criticizes a text: they can only state whether the text has succeeded or failed. This is a very simple, straightforward way in which to interpret the text and explain its potential. A critic will look at the whole of the work, investing thought into the parts that make up the whole, and through analysis of those parts and how they interact, judge if a work has succeeded or not.

Good and bad criticisms are the only outcomes of a critic's review. Good criticism can be stated plainly because, through the systematic analysis of the values and parts of a text, the faults are obvious and easily pointed out. Bad criticism is at a disadvantage for a formalist critic, because the critic has no interaction with the particular author. Bad criticism is merely the shortcoming of the good criticism. The good criticism will only be half effective because the critic lacks a personal relationship with the author. Without intimately knowing the author the critic fails to connect with him. This is good in the case of the review, which keeps it untainted by outside sources, but falls short in conveying any changes that the author can understand in terms of his own creation process. "There is certainly no doubt that the kind of specific and positive help that someone like Ezra Pound was able to give to several writers of our time is...the most important kind of criticism there can be. But many other things are involved - matters that lie outside the specific ambit of criticism altogether" (Brooks 1369).

Unlike Ransom, Brooks wants the criticism to effect the author in the end, but still having the critic retain his distance from anything not relating to the text. Ransom would rather have the critique remain as it is without attempting to help the author form a better text from the critique. The principles of New Criticism are almost universal amongst all of its theorists. The main idea is that the text should be reviewed and read as its own entity. Any outside influence will certainly taint the review in such a way that it will no longer be criticized correctly. When this happens, the review may stray into a multitude of fields including psychology, biography, linguistics, and the process of writing. Separation of the text away from the reader and the author serve to strengthen the review by the critic. In this way, the intention of the text and its potential can be fully explored without hindrance because there are no outside influences changing the perceptions of the critic. The critic can work without worry of becoming mired in something other than criticism, leaving him with a more scientific way to read a text and interpret it.