Chapter 10: Introduction to Critical Theory of Modern Poetry
This article will introduce several common types of literary criticism and Western schools of literary criticism.
Section 1: Three Common Types of Literary Criticism
1. Impressionistic Criticism
(Impressionistic criticism)
In fact, this is the critic’s post-reading impression. The critical discourse directly expresses the reviewer’s intuitive perception and value-based thinking. This type of criticism often lacks systematic method; it “follows feeling,” saying whatever comes to mind. Its interpretation of texts adopts an “impromptu and spontaneous” mode of commentary. Such criticism not only fails to guide readers in appreciating poetic texts, but often misleads them.
In the field of modern poetry criticism, this type of “quasi-oracular” criticism is the most common. Critics often use such texts as “social gift exchanges,” attempting to please the author being reviewed, forming a widespread phenomenon of “wreath-giving” or “pushing the chair / pushing the wheelchair.”
2. Documentary-Based Criticism
Critics focus on documentary research and the biography of writers. They often excerpt passages from traditional poetic commentary across dynasties, or adopt arguments from modern and contemporary poetry critics to verify or support their own views and arguments.
This kind of “scattered and patchwork,” “formulaic” critical strategy has become a common tool used by many academic teachers and students to mislead readers when writing criticism.
3. Theoretical Criticism
This approach adopts modern or contemporary Western critical methodologies and is systematic and structured. It includes text-centered (textual/internal) criticism such as “New Criticism,” “instrumental theory (rhetorical grammar) criticism,” “surrealist criticism,” “deconstructive criticism,” and “semiotic criticism”; as well as contextual/external criticism based on authors and historical-cultural backgrounds, such as “phenomenological criticism,” “feminist criticism,” and “postmodernist criticism.”
(1) Evolution of Western Literary Criticism
- Author-centered theory
During Classicism and Romanticism: interpretation centered on the author; the text functioned as an “appendage.” - Work-centered theory
Formalism, New Criticism, Structuralism: the text exists independently as an autonomous entity. The author withdraws; the work takes center stage. - Reader-centered turn
The work-centered approach retreats, the author remains absent, and the reader enters the stage, as in “reader-response theory” (reception aesthetics).
Section 2: Major Western Literary Critical Theories
Since the twentieth century, Western literary criticism has developed into multiple schools, including Formalism, New Criticism, Archetypal criticism, Structuralism and Semiotics, Reader-response theory (Reception aesthetics), Phenomenology and Hermeneutics, Deconstruction and Post-structuralism, Psychoanalytic criticism of literary texts, Feminist criticism, Postmodernist criticism, Postcolonial discourse criticism, New Historicism, and Cultural Studies.
The author selects several key schools for introduction.
1. Formalism
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Formalism was an influential literary critical movement in Russia. It included many important Russian and Soviet scholars, such as Viktor Shklovsky, Tynyanov, Propp, and Roman Jakobson.
The theoretical claims of Russian Formalism:
- The subject of literary study is the literariness of the work.
- A literary work cannot exist independently of its formal appearance; this redefines “form” in literature.
- Defamiliarization is the fundamental principle of artistic construction and processing.
The concept of “defamiliarization” proposed by Shklovsky is the most valuable and still influential idea in Formalist theory.
“Defamiliarization” means “making strange,” emphasizing that aesthetic experience does not arise from habitual, unconscious everyday perception. Instead, literary aesthetic form must create differentiation. If “familiarity” represents closeness in perception, then “strangeness” is the distancing after familiarity—creating aesthetic difference through an external perspective of distance.
In other words, literature is removed from its normal field of perception, and through creative techniques, perception is reconstructed, increasing cognitive difficulty and breadth, continuously giving readers freshness. The value of literature lies in restoring perception of life through reading, thereby producing aesthetic pleasure.
In modern poetry, defamiliarization can be explained by Du Fu’s principle: “until the words are astonishing, one will never stop.” It includes the dimensions of “development” and “innovation,” reflected in:
- exploration of new fields (e.g., science fiction poetry),
- discovery and construction of new themes (e.g., multimedia visual poetry),
- renewal of old themes (transformation techniques, parody),
- creation of new imagery and lexical grafting,
- use of new grammar (e.g., postmodern poetry), etc.
4. Syntagm and Paradigm
Russian linguist Roman Jakobson, in his 1962 paper Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances, first pointed out that the relations within the syntagmatic axis (syntagm) refer to sequential arrangement of components (e.g., the linear sequence of sounds in speech or words in writing), whose relation is “contiguity.”
The paradigmatic axis (paradigm) refers to a set of possible substitutable elements that exist in the background of any component within a syntagmatic chain; these form a vertical selection set, whose relation is “similarity.”
“This is a very insightful idea: contiguity allows only one possibility, while similarity allows multiple dimensions; thus the same component can belong to multiple paradigmatic sets.”
Jakobson further argued that these two features correspond to the two main types of metaphorical association in human symbolic activity. From a linguistic perspective, metaphor and metonymy correspond to similarity and contiguity. Metaphor relies on similarity (associative resemblance), while metonymy relies on adjacency. The former is primarily descriptive; the latter is primarily referential.
From a literary-historical perspective, these correspond to representation and expression, namely realism and romanticism. Based on Ye Lang’s Modern Aesthetic System (p.177), the model can be summarized as follows:
Syntagm (combination axis) → contiguity → adjacency law → metonymy → expression → Romanticism
Paradigm (selection axis) → similarity → similarity law → metaphor → representation → Realism
2. New Criticism
New Criticism is one of the most influential schools in Anglo-American modern literary criticism. It originated in Britain in the 1920s, developed in the United States in the 1930s, and flourished in the 1940s and 1950s.
It advocates semantic analysis based on close reading of the text and remains one of the fundamental methods of literary criticism, exerting profound influence on contemporary poetry criticism.
It emphasizes the autonomy of the work and seeks to grasp its intrinsic meaning through textual reading and contextual reading. New Criticism focuses on formalist textual analysis, arguing that literary studies should center on the work (text), carefully analyzing language, structure, imagery, etc. (close reading).
Key Terms in New Criticism Poetry Analysis:
1. Ambiguity and Paradox
Cleanth Brooks (1906–1994), a student of John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974), systematized New Critical principles. In handling poetic structure, he emphasized “irony” and “poem as drama”; in handling poetic language, he emphasized “ambiguity” and “paradox.”
He also opposed paraphrasing poetry, calling it the “heresy of paraphrase.”
Ambiguity refers to the phenomenon in which words in a poetic text form multiple meanings within context. A linguistic unit (word or phrase) may contain two or more meanings, allowing multiple interpretations of a sentence. It often arises from rhetorical devices such as puns or homophones.
Ambiguity is regarded as a defining feature of poetic language, enriching meaning and generating wit. It provides semantic multiplicity and enriches interpretation.
2. Irony
Brooks defined irony as “the apparent distortion of a statement by its context.” Context can invert meaning; this is irony. All words in poetry are constrained by context, producing ironic effects.
Irony may appear in language technique (saying something lightly while implying seriousness), or in the overall structure of a work.
3. Tension
“Tension,” originally a physics term, was introduced into literary criticism by Allen Tate (1888–1979), a student of Ransom.
In Tension in Poetry (1938), Tate proposed the concepts of extension (literal meaning) and intension (connotative meaning). The unity of these produces “tension.”
Tension refers to the mutual constraint and mutual dependence between denotative meaning and connotative meaning. Poetry should balance dictionary meaning and extended metaphorical meaning.
If too much emphasis is placed on dictionary meaning, poetry loses depth; if too much emphasis is placed on metaphorical meaning, it becomes obscure. Only through mutual restriction can poetry remain rich and meaningful.
4. Metaphor
Metaphor is a central concept in New Criticism. It is no longer merely a rhetorical device but a fundamental element of poetry. Brooks stated: “We can summarize modern poetic technique as the rediscovery and full use of metaphor.”
I. A. Richards (1893–1979) divided metaphor into “tenor” and “vehicle”: the vehicle is the concrete image, and the tenor is the abstract meaning derived from it. Simile explicitly connects them, while metaphor requires distance and heterogeneity between the two.
5. Close Reading
Close reading is not impressionistic criticism but detailed interpretation. The critic reads each word carefully like using a magnifying glass, capturing implication, suggestion, and association.
Its procedure generally includes:
- understanding lexical meaning,
- understanding context,
- grasping rhetorical features.
6. Misreading and Overreading
These are technical terms in New Criticism.
Misreading means misunderstanding the author’s intended meaning (logical form: if p then not-q).
Overreading means attributing meanings beyond the author’s intention (if p then q + a).
Both may occur in interpretation. Readers may be responsible, especially in symbolic or metaphorical texts. However, even trained critics may misread if the text contains linguistic or logical issues, or insufficient interpretive cues.
3. Archetypal Criticism
Starting from the shared psychological experience of humankind, archetypal criticism conducts a macro-level analysis of recurring expressive patterns, plot themes, and character images in literary works. Archetypal criticism was a very important critical school that was popular in the West during the 1950s and 1960s of the twentieth century. Its main founder was the Canadian scholar Frye. Northrop Frye (1912–1991) is closely associated with myth-archetypal criticism. In 1957 he published his landmark work Anatomy of Criticism, which centrally elaborated the ideas of myth-archetypal criticism, thereby establishing his eminent status in the field of literary criticism. “Archetype,” as an important term in Frye’s critical thought, embodies his fundamental view of literature and criticism.
An important concept connected to the collective unconscious of artists is the archetype. Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) called the contents of the collective unconscious “primordial images.” The term “primordial image” refers to an original model, and all other similar forms are shaped according to this original model. A synonym of the primordial image is the archetype. In Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, Jung pointed out that “the term archetype is the form in Platonic philosophy,” referring to an innate tendency in the collective unconscious, a pre-existing determinant factor in psychological experience, a universally consistent a priori form shared by all psychological reactions. It causes individuals to act in ways similar to how their ancestors once responded to comparable situations.
Although archetypes belong to the collective unconscious, they can manifest as imagistic impressions. Within every collective unconscious there exist a large number of archetypes. The same archetype may vary in detail or name, but its core meaning remains fundamentally the same, corresponding to certain universal human psychological needs. In Carol S. Pearson’s monograph The Inner Hero, six archetypes in Jung’s theory are introduced: the Innocent, the Orphan, the Martyr, the Wanderer, the Warrior, and the Magician. Their respective personality traits and addictive behaviors are also identified. These archetypes frequently appear in literary works, and their underlying meanings remain relatively consistent. Readers are referred to the author’s poetry criticism written using archetypal criticism as methodology:
Example: “Zheng Chouyu — The Vagabond and the Knight-Errant” (see the lower volume of this book)
4. Reader-Response Criticism
In contrast to structuralism’s emphasis on linguistic form and textual structure, reader-response criticism (reception aesthetics) emphasizes the dominant role of the reader in assigning meaning to a work, as well as the different value interpretations and reception phenomena shaped by cultures of different eras upon the text. “There are a thousand Hamlets for a thousand readers.” This statement actually refers to the multiplicity of meanings in reading and interpretation.
1. Horizon of expectations
When a work is placed before a reader, the reader’s own reading experience and memories stored in the mind are immediately activated. As a result, the reader immediately participates in the reading activity and enters a specific emotional state. The factors influencing a reader’s interpretation of a text include the following three:
① Historical horizon (the individual’s cultural, conceptual, and ideological background)
② Legitimate prejudice (limitations of personal cognition)
③ Constraints of social discourse
2. Theory of the appeal structure
The completion of reading is achieved through filling numerous blanks and gaps within the text.
Meaning of reading appeal:
① Establishment of an intersubjective relationship between reader and author
② Tacit understanding between reader and author
③ Reading as “filling in blanks”
Wolfgang Iser (1926–2007) distinguished between literary work and text, arguing that a literary work has an artistic pole (i.e., the text) and an aesthetic pole (i.e., the reader). The artistic pole is the author’s text, while the aesthetic pole is realized through the reader. He proposed the theory of the text’s appeal structure, arguing that the appeal structure of literary texts consists of three elements: “blanks,” “gaps,” and “negations.” These elements stimulate the reader’s imagination during reading, enabling the reader to fill in blanks and gaps, establish new horizons, and thereby constitute the fundamental structure of the text.
3. Implied author
This concept was proposed by American literary theorist Wayne Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction (1961), referring to a kind of personality or consciousness embodied in the final form of a narrative text. In other words, a narrative text takes the form it does because the implied author intentionally or unintentionally embeds within it ideology, values, aesthetic preferences, and so on.
When an author completes a work, they have already implicitly embedded potential readers within the work. In this sense, we can understand the notion of an implied reader, which reflects the pre-constructed nature of potential meaning in the text. That is to say, before the work is formed, the creator has already presupposed, anticipated, or envisioned what type of readers this work might be intended for.
Various scholarly interpretations of the concept “implied author” can be summarized as follows:
- Created by the real author: the real author’s “second self,” a guide for readers — Booth (The Rhetoric of Fiction, 71)
- (Real or implied?) Created by readers: the author inferred by readers, less than or equal to the reader — Chatman (148), Eco (“Between Author and Text,” 84)
- Equivalent to textual meaning — Bal (120)
- The one who gives meaning to the text — Nelles (33)
- The speaker in narrative communication structure — Chatman (151)
The above different interpretations make the concept of “implied author” increasingly ambiguous. For example, in the second case (the implied author is created by readers), who exactly creates the implied author—real readers or implied readers? If it is the former, then the implied author becomes an indefinable concept, because every real reader would create a different implied author, and given the “amateur” status of many readers, many such constructions would be unreliable. If it is the latter, then the interpretive burden is merely shifted from the concept of “implied author” to that of “implied reader,” without solving anything.
