After the New Criticism

This book represents an awesome performance of critical thinking. It traces literary discourse back to the thirties and forties, the period of the "New Criticism", which basically meant an abstracted reading of works from their original context. The new critics were in many cases formalists in that they look for internal coherence and unity rather than references to time and place. The book includes extented discussions of modern philosophies, including existentialism and phenomenology. A synopsis would show a move from myth criticism to existentialism to structuralism and concludes with deconstruction/post-structuralism,i.e. the advent of Derrida. Lentricchia is concerned throughout with showing the limitations of all these approaches and he claims that we need to find some sort of connection between life and literature. His touchstone is "History"--the way from thought to action. Alas, he hopes Foucault will show the way, but ultimately, as he admits later, he too succumbed to kind of formalism. Anyone who is curious about modern critical discourse will profit from a reading of this magnificant book