`A poem contains within itself all the material we need to appreciate it. If more is required, the poem will be so much the less successful.'

This proposition is influenced by the new critics' hypothesis, popularized in the past five decades. They believe in the completeness of the text, and are faithful to the critics' duty to scrutinize the poem without taking any external information to consideration. I partly agree with the statement. It is true that the most important element in analysing a poem is the text, which is supposed to be complete within itself. Yet, how can we know that the appreciation we get from the pure text is a satisfactory one, or, other than that, how can we be sure that our perception of the text's meaning is free from the external knowledge?

New Criticism Approach

By collecting the lexical items in the text...