Marked by a rigorously close textual reading, detached from



biographical or other extratextual material, New Criticism was the



dominant literary theory of the mid-twentieth century. Since that



time, schools of literary criticism have arisen in support of or in opposition to



the approach advocated by the New Critics. Nonetheless, the theory remains



one of the most important sources for groundbreaking criticism and continues



to be a controversial approach to reading literature.



Praising It New is the first anthology of New Criticism to be printed in fifty



years. It includes important essays by such influential poets and critics as



T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Yvor Winters,



Cleanth Brooks, R. P. Blackmur, W. K. Wimsatt, and Robert Penn Warren.



Together, these authors ushered in the modernist age of poetry and criticism



and transformed the teaching of literature in the schools. As the American



poet and critic Randall Jarrell once noted: u201cI do not believe there has been another



age in which so much extraordinarily good criticism of poetry has



been written.u201d



This anthology now makes much of the best American poetry criticism available



again, and includes short biographies and selected bibliographies of its



chief figures. Praising It New is the perfect introduction for students to the



best American poetry criticism of the twentieth century.