Word.ws English Dictionary

New Criticism

New Criticism proper noun: a movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle of the 20th century, emphasizing close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work functions as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic object.

Proper noun

New Criticism

  1. A movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle of the 20th century, emphasizing close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work functions as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic object.
    • It is not just these works that are to be explicated as texts, it is the workings of a political and literary culture that can strengthen the present. For this point of view, Matthiessen was attacked. In the heyday of formalist New Criticism, itself a way of going about the study of literature that...1983 August 13, Denis M. Sweet, “A Scholar For Our Democracy”, in Gay Community News, volume 11, number 5, page 13
    • One could argue that it is precisely this lack of self-awareness or self-reflexivity that so easily renders environmentalists the butt of jokes, that makes them "vulnerable," to use that language of New Criticism.2018, Nicole Seymour, Bad Environmentalism, page 14

New Criticism meaning in Tamil

New Criticism in Tamil

புதுத் திறனாய்வு

Questions about New Criticism

What does New Criticism mean?
New Criticism means a movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle of the 20th century, emphasizing close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work functions as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic object.
What is New Criticism in Tamil?
New Criticism in Tamil is புதுத் திறனாய்வு. See New Criticism meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is New Criticism?
New Criticism is a proper noun.

Words near New Criticism in the dictionary

  1. New Corella
  2. new country project
  3. new country projects
  4. New Covenant
  5. New Critic
  6. New Criticism
  7. New Cross
  8. New Cross Gate
  9. New Cumberland
  10. New Cumnock
  11. New Cuyama

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: New Criticism (page history and authors); new criticism (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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