The Cultural Politics of the New Criticism

Focusing on Robert Penn Warren, John Crowe Ransom, and Allen Tate, this work explores the emergence of New Criticism in the late 1920s and early 1930s, highlighting its impact on English studies in subsequent decades. Jancovich challenges the notion that this movement represented bourgeois individualism, arguing instead that it arose from pre-capitalist critiques of modern society in the American South. He also delineates the differences between these Southern poets and later New Critics, asserting that contemporary scholars often overlook the ideological roots of the movement.