2-2.

Discussion: Connections: Formalism and New Criticism

First let me attempt to define in my mind the differences between Formalism and New Criticism.

Formalism theory focuses on “defamiliarization” within a literary work while focusing

extensively on context (Shmoop Editorial Team, 2008). Similarly, New Criticism, like

Formalism ignored “old criticism” characterized of deep historical and biographical analysis

(Shmoop Editorial Team, 2008) to theorize

Defamiliarization in Formalism can be seen and studied in a handful of the literary works

presented in this Module. Emily Dickinson’s, A Narrow Fellow in the Grass, where her poem

speaks of the fear of snakes “a narrow Fellow in the Grass / you may have met him, did you not”

her figurative language supposes a man for a snake just as the man, Gregor Samsa is transformed

into the brown insect, and Jean Toomers, A Portrait in Georgia, poem makes you think you are

reading about a Caucasian women’s looks only to be speaking of colored lynching in Jim Crow

America. These powerful contrasts make the reader follow lines of text and imagery toward the

authors message and ultimate conclusion which are often stark, shocking, grotesque, painfully

sad, and humanly engrossed in complexity.

Justification

They are complex because of the defamiliarization of one idea or knowing of a thing from its

source. The author is able to mask and reveal at the same time within the context and complexity

of language. I had never read this particular poem of Toomers and was shocked by its level of

figurative depth and psychological scope contrasted by the short seemingly simple poetic seven

lines, lines starting with “Hair, Eyes, Lips, Breath” (Academy of Poets, n.d.) against the horrors

and tortures of lynching rituals. “Hair/braided chestnut/ coiled like a lyncher’s rope” (Academy

of Poets, n.d.). Like New Criticism, all three pieces of literature would be studied for its genius

of literary context, lines and structure, and form.

New Criticism might pick apart, Toomer’s lines, “And her slim body / white as the ash / of black

flesh after flame” seeking to discover the contrasting metaphors “her slim body,” as “white ash”

and “ash” as a metaphor to “black flesh after flame” (Academy of Poets, n.d.) and seek to

analyze the “paradox” (Shmoop Editorial Team, 2008) within its overall literary context. In my

opinion, both of these literary theories would apply to these three authors works. I would just as
easily theorize the paradoxes within Dickinson poem about snakes’ men or fear of a kind of slick

unethical man or immoral human being, similarly the awful paradox within the story The

Metamorphosis where Gregor finds himself desperately hopeless in his old state working

tirelessly for his family and his new state as an insect who must ultimately die.