ENGD98Y3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Louise Rosenblatt, Norman N. Holland, Stanley Fish
Document Summary
Formalism emphasizes the manner of reading literature - it was a criticism defined by american and. English critics in the first two-thirds of the 20th century. To students of this era, formalism was known as new criticism". While new critics held a lot of power at the time, today they are often critiqued by more contextual approaches. In the last third of the century new criticism went through many different titles. Today, new criticism is considered to be old" criticism, but the emphasis on form and close reading is still important. Reading well is what new critics helped us to do. The individual work of art is an organic form: The structure of a work that has grown naturally from the author"s subject and materials - as opposed to being shaped by (and conforming to) artificial rules. Concept was developed by samuel taylor coleridge to counter the arguments that shakespeare"s plays were formless.
