SOURCE: Tassin, Anthony. “Cleanth Brooks and the Endurance of the New Criticism.” The South Carolina Review 25, no. 1 (fall 1992): 33-43.

In the following essay, Tassin evaluates Brooks's ideas regarding New Criticism, concluding that as a literary theory, it continues to endure.

Today the New Criticism is considered not only superseded, obsolete, and dead but somehow mistaken and wrong. … Still I think that much of what the New Criticism taught is valid and will be valid as long as people think about the nature and function of literature and poetry.

—Rene Wellek, “The New Criticism: Pro and Contra” (87)

The New Deal. The New Frontier. The New Criticism. They are no longer new, but each of these concepts in its day caught the attention of the public under the aegis of newness. In each case it was one man who conferred the name on the concept: Roosevelt, Kennedy, Ransom. And while...