SOURCE: Robey, David. “Anglo-American New Criticism.” In Modern Literary Theory: A Comparative Introduction, Ann Jefferson and David Robey, pp. 65-83. Totowa, N.J.: Barnes & Noble Books, 1982.

In the following essay, Robey offers an overview of New Criticism, including an explanation of the theories of I. A. Richards, as well as the development of New Criticism in England and the United States, focusing specifically on the study of poetry.

The term ‘New Criticism’ is usually used for the literary theory and criticism that began with the work of I. A. Richards and T. S. Eliot before the war in England, and was continued by figures such as John Crowe Ransom, W. K. Wimsatt, Cleanth Brooks and Allen Tate in the United States during the forties, fifties and sixties. Although it developed quite independently of the Russian Formalist/Prague School structuralist theory discussed in the last two chapters, there are...