Geovanny J. Berríos

New Criticism  Is a type of formalist current of literary theory that dominated Anglo- American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic object.

To the New Critics, poetry was a special kind of discourse, a means of communicating feeling and thought that could not be expressed in any other kind of language. It differed from the language of science or philosophy, but it conveyed equally valid meanings. The common denominator of the authors of the New Criticism was systematized by Wimsatt in a series of points to criticize some assumptions of traditional literary studies:

 Internal evidence: Internal evidence is the actual details present inside a given work. The apparent content of a work is the internal evidence, including any historical knowledge and past expertise or experience with the kind of art being interpreted that is required to understand what that work is: its forms and traditions. The form of epic poetry, the meter, quotations etc. are internal to the work.  Intentional fallacy: a poem's meaning is nothing more than an expression of the private experiences or intention of its author vs. the poet's mind as a catalyst, bringing together the experiences of the author's personality into an external object and a new creation. The poem is about the experiences of the author that are similar to all of our experiences.

 External evidence: What is not literally contained in the work itself is external to that work, including all statements the artist made privately or published in journals about the work, or in conversations, , etc. External evidence is concerned with claims about why the artist made the work: reasons external to the fact of the work in itself.  Organic unity: the critic's job, ascertain the structure of the poem, to see how it operates to achieve its unity, and to discover how meaning evolves directly from the poem itself. How meaning is achieved through the various and sometimes conflicting elements operating in the poem itself.

 Contextual evidence: The third type of evidence concerns any meanings produced from a particular work's relationship to other art made by the same artist—including its exhibition (where, when and by whom). The use of biographical information in a discussion of an artwork does not necessarily indicate an intentional fallacy.

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