Gothic Poems to Love & Liberty
A hauntingly beautiful collection of poetry that explores love, freedom, and the shadows of the soul.
A hauntingly beautiful collection of poetry that explores love, freedom, and the shadows of the soul.
John Crowe Ransom (1888-1974) was an influential American literary critic and the founder of New Criticism, a formalist movement that emphasized "closed reading" of the text. In New Criticism, the focus shifted from socio-cultural aspects around a text to the internal elements within the text itself, making a text's internal world the primary site of analysis.
John Crowe Ransom was associated with the Fugitives, a group that valued the preservation of classical and traditional values and styles. In his seminal work, The New Criticism (1941), Ransom proposed the following ideas:
Similar to I.A. Richards' "closed-reading" approach, New Criticism advocates for the sanctity of reading the written words on the page. It allows for the analysis of a particular extract in isolation, without considering the larger context of the book or the author.
New Criticism prioritizes the purity of the text and the act of reading, dismissing historical or political perspectives surrounding the text. It serves an aesthetic purpose, considering a text significant for its own sake, detached from politics, morality, and history.
John Crowe Ransom's notable works include: