Humpty Dumpty and the Metaphysical Poetry in the Twentieth-century Criticism

  • Carmen Gallo Università di Napoli "L'Orientale"
Keywords: Twentieth-century criticism, Formal criticism, New criticism, New historicism, John Donne, The Canonization, Early modern criticism,

Abstract

The paper compares two different ways to analyse poetical texts which became dominant in Anglo-American academic scholarship in the second half of the twentieth century: the new criticism, actually imposing itself since the 30s, and the new historicism, whose impact started in the 80s and is still influential today. Through the analyses both offered of a poem by John Donne, The Canonization, ideological issues as well as conflicting views on the relationship between a formal engagement and a content commitment, and more generally between an intrinsic and an extrinsic approach to the study of literature (Wellek- Warren), are retraced and contextualized. The main aim is to show how political issues always affect didactic practices, critical proposals and movements, and how ideological biases did affect methodological proposals and interpretative discourses in the XXth-century early modern criticism.

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Author Biography

Carmen Gallo, Università di Napoli "L'Orientale"
Assegnista di Ricerca in Letteratura inglese presso il Dipartimento di Studi Letterari, Linguistici e Comparati dell'Università di Napoli "L'Orientale".

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Published
2015-11-30
How to Cite
Gallo, C. (2015). Humpty Dumpty and the Metaphysical Poetry in the Twentieth-century Criticism. Between, 5(10). https://doi.org/10.13125/2039-6597/1694