Prepared by: Maulik B. Bhatt,

Roll No: 03,

M.A. Part – I,Semester- II,

Department ofEnglish,

Bhavnagar University,

Bhavnagar.

9th of March, 2011.

New Criticism, with its Practical

Application in Let my sisters title

thisLiterature requires and deserves responsible reading and readable response.

New Criticism

•Named “new” after

the new emphasis that

was given to the

criticism

•Anglo-American critical theory (1920-

1970)

•Joel. E. Spingarn – The New Criticism

(1911)

• John Crow Ransom - The New

Criticism (1941)

• Replaced the biographical and

historical methods.

• Interpretations – intrinsic.

• A formalist mode of critical

interpretation.

• Held poetry in high regard.

Let my sisters title this

[those with aversion to poet’s comments can ignore mine]

mrs.

[ i forget her name – forgive me for forgetting. she was

content to be someone’s (house) wife, someone’s mom…]

wrote her article

[i apologize at the outset for being harsh on a first-timer

i understand the difficulty of getting published]

Which appeared on the first page of Woman’s Life

[which is advertised as a supplementary for the “second” sex

and it comes every second day of every second week]

• A request

• not worthy to be

titled

•Poet

composes.

• Defines her

role

• Use of brackets

• Use of ellipsis

• Poet’s casual

approach

• An indicator

• Nepotism in air

• Refers to

Simon de

Beauvoir’s

The Second

Sex (1949)

she wrote of how feminists are misled and how they miss

out the “small joys of life.” now in her forties, with her

Husband away at work and her sons away at school she

Wrote movingly of how she discovers the pleasures of life…

[read on to know the small joys of life… life? Hers or his?]

………………………………………………………

and she spoke of ecstasy, of the arousal, of the sublime

happiness that filled her when the coconut blended with

the hot green chilies and she came at last to speak

of the contentment of being a woman

which meant that she discovered

the small joys of life and the small joy

was the aroma of coconut chutney

prepared fresh and hot to be served

to her hungry husband and hungrier children.

the feminists didn’t bother with rebuttals

after all patriarchy is very institutionalized

et cetera… so some woman think feminism

is a bad word and being a woman means

grinding grinding and grinding and so on and so forth.

• Sardonic

remarks

• Who is

misled?

• Discovers

•Objectificatio

n

• women

Dalitized

Refers to the

lust•many other

things

Acknowledgement… My heartfelt thanks to Dilip Sir and Devarshi Sir who didnot limit themselves to the syllabus only but alsobrought the example from the works outside thesyllabus and taught us the practical application ofliterary theories and encouraged us to use them.

My earnest thanks to Ruchira Mam and Jay Sir for theirconstant support.

I would like to thank my friends also who participated inthe application of different theories enthusiastically.