This lecture was divided into two parts. The first part focused on the history of two literary theory movements of the 20th century, New Criticism (NC) and New Historicism (NH), and their influence on the American criticism of the poetical text. NC developed in the years between the two World Wars as a conservatory movement in opposition to urban capitalism. Professor Gallo explained how it advocated the creation of a new form of criticism, more scientific, precise, and systematic (Ransom, 1937). The development of this movement until the 1970s was taken into consideration, together with criticisms moved to it from other movements, e.g. Marxism. Subsequently, the point of view of NH was presented. This movement, which originated from the ‘Cultural Turn’ in the 1980s, considered the broader historical context in which a poetic text originated, in opposition to the more text-oriented approach of NC. In the second part of the lecture, Professor Gallo proposed to observe how three different critics – Brooks, Culler, and Marotti – used the poet ‘The Canonization’ by John Donne (1633) to express different ideas concerning the nature of poetry criticism.
2 dicembre 2022