Meg -5 Solved

Q2: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Did_Wordsworth_or_Coleridge_have_greater_influence_on_modern_criticism

Q3: New Criticism is a form of literary criticism that triumphed as the predominant critical form in the 1940s through the 1960s. John Crowe Ransom is responsible for naming it in his book of the same name, published in 1941. It quickly became “the” way to read literature and poetry, and was taught in both college and high schools. The underlying idea is that the intent of the author is not important; the text itself is all that should be examined.
Literary criticism prior to this form had considered a number of ways to interpret literature, with no consensus as to the best method. Some critics evaluated literature in terms of the author’s history, showing how works were representative or differed from the time periods in which they were written. Others evaluated works in terms of the author’s life and background.
New Criticism differed greatly from previous forms as it dismissed authorial intent, and particularly ignored biographical and historical information about an author. Instead, literature was to be interpreted based solely on the cohesiveness of the work. To a New Critic, whatever the author intended was not relevant, as the form of the work always transformed intent, producing new meanings. The critic’s position was to evaluate various aspects of a text that produced ambiguity. He or she analyzed metaphor, simile, and other rhetorical tropes that resulted in stress and counterstress, reconciling them to find the harmony in a work. Through analysis, the critic could then tell readers how to interpret a text and what value was to be gained from reading a text. In other words, the critic became the interpreter through which literature could be understood.
Additionally, the text had to be considered as an object of literature, complete within itself. If the reader began to extrapolate to his or her interpretation outside of the text, he or she had strayed from New Criticism. The critic should be free from his or her own feelings or emotional response when reading the text, and only criticism that stuck to the text was of value. Later theorists argued that there can be no freedom from the self in textual analysis, and that this desire to analyze text as if the reader were a blank slate is quite impossible.
In their new elevated status as interpreter, however, critics legitimized their own profession. Publication of books and articles that clarified the meanings of poetry and other writings were cousins to literature, because they provided the layperson with a method for understanding what he or she read. Though much of New Criticism has been soundly refuted, this new, enhanced status of the critic remains.
This form of criticism influenced the literary canon, the materials considered to be art, because critics could point to those works that achieved harmony through ambiguity. As such, certain works were considered more valuable than others, greatly influencing which ones were assigned as reading material. Students writing about such material often had their interpretations scrapped because they had failed to find the “correct” interpretation of a text.
While New Criticism remains a useful tool for teaching students about the basic elements in poetry, most of it has been refuted and replaced. Newer forms of literary criticism, which often posit that texts can produce multiple meanings that are directly opposed, have triumphed. These theories have reintroduced the consideration of the author’s intent from a psychological or historical point of view. Other critical schools, such as structuralism, evaluate the specific language of the text to derive multiple meanings.
The best refutations have led to inclusion of more works in the canon. New Critics tended to value Western work over any other forms of literature, and moreover, placed a higher value on works written by men. Feminist and New Historical Critics have restored many works to the canon that had been ousted by New Critics.

http://www.slideshare.net/mehdi_hassanian/new-criticism

New Critics: Their Contribution

The New Critics have done valuable work and made considerable contribution to literary criticism. Summing up their contribution to literary criticism Pritchard writes, "Their concentration upon linguistic expression has benefited the study of poetry. Readers needed to realize that 'the poem's the thing.' By this redirection of poetic study and by the publicity they have given to poetic problems, they have increased the number of readers of poetry. Even their too sweeping assertions, by stirring opponents to combat them, have injected new life into the study of literature. The self-evaluation of the New Critics during the past seven years, and the indications that they are increasingly ready to widen their study, are encouraging signs. Whether this expansion indicates their further development or their disappearance as a school, no one can say. They remain, however, one of the most important and colorful schools of criticism which the century has yet produced."

Q4: http://massthink.wordpress.com/2007/06/03/the-signifier-the-signified-and-the-sign/
Q5: Post modernism contribute to the logic of disintegration due to the rise in trade between the merchants. Post modernism leads to new type of relations which is a cause off disintegration.
Deconstruction theories like Postmodernism and Poststructuralism represent the "logics of disintegration" because they believe that the structural understandings of truth are fundamentally flawed. For the Poststructuralist thinker, the "structure" against which they argue is a language based one in which binary oppositions are used to determine structure and meaning. Poststructuralist thinkers seek to critique the supposed establishment of truth and order. It is this deconstruction that feeds the Postmodern thinker, in general. The basic "logic of disintegration" is the idea of this critique. There can be no extenuating order seen as "truth" or "transcendent" for the Postmodern thinker. The Derrida idea of "Reading is transformational" fits into this context. This transformational element indicates something that is in flux, in constant definition and redefinition. It makes order impossible, contributing to the belief in the logics of disintegration.