A Historical Study Of The New Criticism

"The new Criticism"was the criticism which in the form of text-centered in the twentieth century, they were a complete subversion of the traditional academic study, and they even thought "there was nothing else outside the text ",so they were criticized by attaching importance to internal forms of literature as well as lacking of social and historical factors after the trend. In fact, it was impossible to completely throw off the external elements of literature. The social and historical factors were inevitably involved in the text. However, because of the sound of critics in academia, the aspect of the external elements studying the new criticism was ignored or even forgotten, the main purpose of this article was to excavate historical aspects of the external studying in literature from the new criticism.At first ,This article affirmed that The new Criticism had an discussion of external elements in literature, and it denied the critics of lacking social and historical factors in The new Criticism, second, from the angle of "history ", it focused on the key word "historical " to discuss the external studying in The new criticism. "Historical" means the characteristic of history, here was a new interpretation. First of all, "Historical" was a reference to the definition of history by Marx, including timing, development and activity; Secondly, "Historical" relates to the traditionally social and historical criticism on the definition of history, it was a combination of historical knowledge, historical background, and perspective or positioning of history. There were four aspects in the "Historical" study of The new Criticism: Respect for the history, Close-reading in history, Rewriting history and Clarify the history of them. These four aspects were a gradual description of the new criticism, not only from the time, but also from space."Respect for history"was a understanding of historical knowledge, it emphasized the attitude and perspective of The New Criticism from their inheritance and development in the knowledge of history, including the continuation of the literary tradition, the renaissance of classical poetry and introduction of historical articles which wrote by the new criticism."Respect for history"was the foundation, and"Close-reading in history"discovered historical characters in language, context and emotion expression from their articles. it was a practical studying which approach to the case and project, which responded to the"Respect for history","Rewriting history"was a hard effort in the history of the new criticism. As an achievement of them, they re-examined and re-arranged the history of literary, and history also admitted what they had done. They were given a great honor and status in literature and social history. The part of"Clarify the history of them"was done after all honors of the new criticism. It was a brilliant criticism and evaluation of themselves, not only the reflection of their own merits and demerits, but also to the academic. By hearing the sound of overwhelming criticisms of them, we should also consider that carefully: the new criticism had brought us more wealth of literature than others.