and welcome back to our discussion of literary criticism today we're going to be talking about new criticism as we talk about these different kinds of criticisms it might be worth our time to pay attention to the locus of meaning where is meaning in a text for instance meaning might be in what the author is thinking or intending as he is writing the piece meaning might be in the work itself or it might be in the reader who interprets the work where is it each of our different theories have a different opinion about that new criticism is called new criticism because it's a shift away from the older styles of criticism that focused entirely on the author and the historical time period instead new criticism says well the text itself should really stand alone so the new critics really have a textual Focus they're interested in the work itself they don't care what the author intended who cares anymore they don't really care what the reader thinks about it they care what the text says after all it is a little difficult to say that authorial intent is the true meaning when it's difficult to nail down what exactly the author intended I mean some authors do comment on their books but not all of them and even if an author does comment upon his or her work we still have to interpret the comments in some way so there is something to say for a textual Focus so how is it done the first step to new criticism and the most important part of new criticism is close reading you see if the meaning is found in the text you really need to read it carefully to understand it and if you don't read carefully then you're going to miss its true meaning so so really there are a couple of different ways to read you could read very superficially and just get the gist or you could read carefully or you could read painstakingly and the new critics really read painstakingly I mean they pay attention to every single word and every shade of meaning in a word because it might influence the whole text they talk about the text as being a web all the little pieces of it working together to create the whole feeling there's a really great essay on this by cleen Brooks called the heresy of paraphrase it's a chapter in one of his books he talks about how you can't paraphrase a text or else something will be lost because it's not just the content and it's not just the form but it's the way the two play together and work together and synthesize into a meaning now one of the difficulties with reading this closely and this carefully is that it's difficult to do with a fulllength novel or something like you wouldn't want to do this with lay misero which is like that thick but you can do it in portions let's say you comment on the work as a whole and then Focus very specifically on one chapter or one scene and analyze that in detail or you might analyze one particular aspect that recurs throughout the book and look at that aspect in close detail this close analysis can really reveal lots of interesting things but not only do you just read closely you're also trying to make a value judgment where does that value judgment come from the new critics believe that a book has depth if it has a sense of complexity and tension to it but also remains a cohesive unified whole so as I'm doing this close reading I'm looking for these tensions that would be things that seem paradoxical things that seem to oppose other meanings for instance I put up a video of loose new criticism about the movie Frozen to give an example of new criticism you can view that right here notice how we have things in opposition we have Elsa and Anna who seem to be in complete contrast with each other one is very associated with the spring and spring colors and openness the other is associated with being closed and winter and cold but in reality the two are unified by a mutual love that saves both of them so the next step is to explore how the tensions are resolved in unity what unifies and draws together the whole work if a work doesn't have tension well then it's really flat and uninteresting and superficial if a work doesn't have Unity then it falls apart and doesn't feel like a complete hole so the new critical look at a work is to look at it very closely identify things that cause tension and find out how the text as unified as a whole if it seems to have complexity and tension in it and it seems to be well unified that is a good book and it might make you cry thanks for watching you can click on one of the links over here and watch one of the other literary criticism videos or click here to subscribe click on the word literary criticism and you can watch the introduction video again I'll see you next time