Found in Critical Terms for Literary Study, by W.J.T. Mitchell, page 16, paragraph 2.
Formalism, also known as new criticism, is a form of critical literary theory emphasizing artistry over intention. This idea has been especially prevalent in the last century. In essence, it states that the ideas and intentions of the author are unimportant; the work stands on its own, and is the only thing that matters. Anything else is unnecessary and even irrelevant. Emerging in the 1920's as a response to critics that perhaps scrutinized author's lives perhaps too much, practitioners of this new criticism used nothing but the text that they were critiquing as a reference, even going so far as to rule emotions they felt while reading unrelated. New critics view literature much the way music is viewed today, with the sound and artistry being much more important than the message itself. In their eyes, the only meaning to be taken from the work is the meaning literally right there on the page. This de-emphasis and even denial of the several other layers of "representation" a work may carry leaves little room for any other analysis.
New Criticism Explained
Formalism; A Basic Approach to Reading and Understanding Literature
VirtuaLit;Critical Approaches
Intentional Fallacy
Affective Fallacy
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