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Literature vocabulary · Criticism and Analysis

New Criticism

Meaning in literature, with examples

nounAdvanced term

In literature, New Criticism means: A twentieth-century critical approach emphasizing close analysis of a work's internal relations.

In Turkish: Yeni Eleştiri

How it is used

Use for the historical school emphasizing language, irony and structure; not every recent review is New Criticism.

Example sentences

  1. Using New Criticism, the student examined the poem's tensions without beginning with the poet's life.

    The analysis gives priority to relations within the poem.

  2. Our course contrasts New Criticism with approaches that foreground the reader's changing responses.

    The comparison concerns where each method locates interpretive evidence.

Common collocations

  • the methods of New Criticism
  • New Criticism and close reading
  • close readingA careful, detailed reading of a short passage that pays attention to individual words, sounds, images and structure to show how they create meaning.
  • literary theoryThe study of the ideas and methods used to read and interpret literature, such as structuralism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, feminism and postcolonial theory.

More terms: Criticism and Analysis

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