SOURCE: Wellek, René. “The New Criticism: Pro and Contra.” Critical Inquiry 4, no. 4 (summer 1978): 611-24.

In the following essay, Wellek defends the theories of New Criticism against its critics who dismiss it as an isolated method of interpretation that reduces the interpretation of a literary text to a science. Wellek counters these arguments, and writes that New Criticism is a method of literary study that will exist as a valid mode of study as long as scholars continue to think about the “nature and function of literature and poetry.”

Today the New Criticism is considered not only superseded, obsolete, and dead but somehow mistaken and wrong. Four accusations are made most frequently. First, the New Criticism is an “esoteric aestheticism,” a revival of art for art's sake, uninterested in the human meaning, the social function and effect of literature. The New Critics are called “formalists,” an opprobrious term used...