Isnt that 'ground bass' Robin?
But I tend to agree with your take on New Criticism; or at least, once
taught it, it's difficult to get totally out from under it (& what's
wrong about paying such close attention to a text, anyway?)....
Doug
On 18-Mar-10, at 8:22 AM, Robin Hamilton wrote:
> Less that New Historicists are not, or less, concerned with the
> historical context as that, unlike the Old Historicists, they don't
> see this context as homogeneous so much as fractured. And the
> marxism isn't something that intrudes, simply an unstated ground-
> base assumption.
>
>> You and I, as fate would have it, were luckily (?) forced by our
>> professors
>> to criticise poems and plays WITHOUT historical contexts.
>
> Yeah, good old New Criticism -- "Treat every text as if it were
> written by an anonymous writer yesterday." It's amazing how well
> this actually worked, and I found it all profoundly liberating, well
> before New Historicism was even a gleam in eternity's eye. In an
> odd way, I don't find any opposition between New Criticism and New
> Historicism. The best side of New Criticism, the ferociously close
> attention to the detail of a text, never did die, but simply got
> absorbed as a given into other kinds of criticism.
Douglas Barbour
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http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
Latest books:
Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
Wednesdays'
http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-from-aboveground-press_10.html
The secret
which got lost neither hides
nor reveals itself, it shows forth
tokens.
Charles Olson
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