Objective Features of New Criticism: Analyzing the Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson

The focus of this essay, to determine what seem to be 'objective' features of 'New Criticism', will be based on three poems by Alfred Lord Tennyson. The first poem in this study ' "Over the dark world flies the wind" ' and the one which I shall pay particular attention to, is a poem of ten lines and is purportedly the type of lyric which David Buchbinder like Graham Martin suggests lends itself best to this type of literary theory:

Though the new critics were careful always to signal that their use of the term 'poetry' included all literature, in fact much of their important work neglected fictional and dramatic texts...The principal reasons for this are first, that lyric poetry is typically easier to work with, because such poems are generally shorter...This then, is a reason of expedience: in wishing to demonstrate their theory in practice, the New Critics were concerned to provide examples that could be grasped easily and in whole form. The other two poems are 'Ulysses' and 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' both of which have a definite historical context and include authorial intention. It is my aim however, to apply the principle features of a New Critical reading to both of these poems assessing each in turn to discover whether or not New Criticism may be applied effectively and objectively: showing also, that meaning is vested in the text and not myself as reader.

Tennyson's poem " 'Over the dark world flies the wind' " is one in which it is possible to apply what the New Critics deem essential elements to the objective reading of a poem. One of several assumptions made by New Criticism is the text's independence from the author thus freeing the text from historical or biographical elements which are likely to affect the objective reading of the poem. In The Well Wrought Urn, Cleanth Brooks expresses the New Critics concern with the strongly historical