对美国新批评派的评价

The New Criticism, An Appraisal

新判批派是二十世纪美国的一个影响最大的文学批评流派。它以新自称，人们也这样接受它，那么．它究竟新在什么地方？它的新对我们今天有什么意义，有没有可资借鉴的价值？我想就这几个问题谈谈个人粗浅的看法。

The article presents a brief survey of the American New Criticism as a trend of literary criticism seen in historical perspective,examining its formative factors, the main arguments of its advocates, and its merit and drawbacks. The American New Criticism arose early in the twentieth century as a reaction against avariety of mcdes of literary criticism in the 19th century, and reached its zenith in the sixties： Though replaced now by some new theories, its influence is still felt in literary criticism with its emphasis on close reading, the new devices of analysis and its insistence on the literariness as the criterion of value--judgement. Incompatible with our mentality as the ontological criticism is to take the literary work of art as a self--sufficient entity independent of all the external factors, it does offer something new to us, who are used to taking literary works as social documentation.