Literary Criticism “Tension in poetry” ()

Literary Criticism “Tension in poetry” ()

Allen Tate (1899-1979)

Introduction :-The rise of New Criticism:-

            The new criticism which was a school of criticism flourished during the first half of the twentieth century in America and England. It put the theory of inspiration off the gear. It assumes a close and causative relationship between society and literature and between society and the writer. It is the stress on textual criticism which has made it new. Otherwise there is nothing new in it. It had its origin in the writings of T. E. Hulme; but it is now mainly an American movement. The term was first used by J. E. Spingam. Its chief exponents in America are Kenneth Burke, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Richard Blackmur, Cleanth Brooks, etc. In England its leading representatives are I. A. Richards, T. S. Eliot, F. R. Leavis, William Empson, etc.

            It was the reaction against the external school of criticism which focuses on sociological, historical and biographical aspects of a text. It is an internal school of criticism. Different New critics of poetry answered differently in response to the question… “What is poetic in poetry?” To the new critics poetic poetry is “its ability to attract attention towards itself.”

About this ability,  R. S. Crane aptly remarks,

“From I. A. Richard’s concept of ‘behavior of words’.. or Allen Tate’s theory of tension’, w fin the same search for the meaning of words. “


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