New Formalism

New Formalism
Name	New Formalism
Years active	Late 20th century–21st century
Country	United States; United Kingdom

New Formalism

New Formalism emerged in the late 20th century as a reaction to prior trends in Modernism (literature), Free verse, Confessional poetry, Postmodernism, and Structuralism (literary theory), seeking renewed attention to meter, rhyme, and traditional forms associated with Elizabethan drama, Metaphysical poets, Romanticism, Victorian poetry, and the practices of Oxford University Press–era scholarship. Advocates drew on techniques historically linked to William Shakespeare, John Donne, Alexander Pope, William Wordsworth, and T. S. Eliot while engaging with contemporaries like Seamus Heaney, Philip Larkin, W. H. Auden, William Butler Yeats, and Ted Hughes.

Overview

Proponents argued that formal techniques long exemplified by Edmund Spenser, Geoffrey Chaucer, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and Robert Browning remained viable against the innovations of Ezra Pound, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), Wallace Stevens, Langston Hughes, and Allen Ginsberg. The movement intersected with practices in institutions such as Harvard University, Yale University, Princeton University, Columbia University (New York), University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, University of Chicago and journals including The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review, Poetry (magazine), The New Yorker, and The Criterion (literary magazine). It engaged with awards and recognitions like the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, National Book Award, T. S. Eliot Prize, Bollingen Prize, and fellowships from MacArthur Foundation and Guggenheim Fellowship.

Origins and historical context

Roots trace to late-20th-century responses found in publications by figures associated with University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, Johns Hopkins University, Stanford University, University of Michigan, Brown University, and New York University. Early advocates surfaced alongside editors and poets connected to Faber and Faber, Random House, Viking Press, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Knopf and small presses such as Graywolf Press, Copper Canyon Press, and Wesleyan University Press. The movement arose in dialogue with movements and moments tied to Beat Generation, Black Arts Movement, Confessional movement, Language poets, and debates around New Criticism, Reader-response criticism, Deconstruction, and Cultural materialism.

Key concepts and principles

Central principles invoked techniques associated with the works of William Shakespeare, John Milton, Alexander Pope, Ben Jonson, Geoffrey Chaucer, and William Wordsworth: disciplined meter, stanzaic architecture, sonnet sequences, heroic couplets, and formal constraints. Proponents referenced precedents in Renaissance literature, Augustan poetry, Neoclassicism, Romanticism, and the craft exemplified in editions by Oxford University Press, Penguin Classics, Cambridge University Press, and anthologies such as The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Key terms and practices were discussed in venues like The Hudson Review, The Sewanee Review, The London Review of Books, and during symposia at The British Academy and The American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Major proponents and influential works

Prominent poets and critics associated in public debates included Dana Gioia, Mark Jarman, Christian Wiman, James Fenton, A. E. Stallings, M. L. Rosenthal, Donald Hall, R. S. Thomas, Moniza Alvi, Rita Dove, Alice Oswald, Carol Ann Duffy, Les Murray, Olga Broumas, John Fuller, Michael Hofmann, Jane Hirshfield, A. E. Housman (as antecedent), Robert Graves (as antecedent), Anthony Hecht, R. S. Gwynn, Paul Muldoon, and editors at The Southern Review and Ploughshares. Influential essays and collections appeared in books and periodicals from Princeton University Press, Harvard University Press, Yale University Press, Faber and Faber, and anthologies edited by Helen Vendler, Christopher Ricks, M. H. Abrams, Cleanth Brooks and Terry Eagleton.

Criticisms and debates

Critics connected to Language poetry figures such as Charles Bernstein, C. D. Wright, Rosmarie Waldrop, and Lyn Hejinian argued against formal emphasis, aligning with theorists like Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Fredric Jameson, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Stuart Hall in broader cultural critique. Debates engaged editors and reviewers at The New York Times Book Review, London Review of Books, The Guardian (London), The Atlantic (magazine), and critics like Harold Bloom and Helen Vendler. Opponents charged elitism, historical nostalgia, and limitations noted by contributors at conferences hosted by Modern Language Association and Association of Writers & Writing Programs.

Methods and analytical techniques

Practitioners employed scansion, metrical analysis, intertextual reading, and close reading methods rooted in traditions associated with New Criticism figures such as I. A. Richards, John Crowe Ransom, Cleanth Brooks, W. K. Wimsatt and editorial practices seen at Cambridge University Press and Routledge. Techniques included composing sonnets, villanelles, sestinas, heroic couplets, and ottava rima modeled on work by Edmund Spenser, Dante Alighieri, Petrarch, Francesco Petrarca, Giacomo Leopardi, Graham Greene (as a stylistic referent), along with annotated editions by Harold Bloom, Joseph Brodsky, and Anthony Burgess. Workshops at Iowa Writers' Workshop, Stanford University Creative Writing Program, and summer programs at Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and Yaddo trained poets in these techniques.

Influence and legacy

New Formalism influenced curricula at Poets House, The Poetry Society (UK), National Poetry Foundation, Royal Society of Literature, and creative writing programs at Columbia University School of the Arts, Iowa Writers' Workshop, University of East Anglia, and University of Iowa. Its impact appeared in prize lists of Pulitzer Prize, T. S. Eliot Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award, MacArthur Fellows Program, and anthologies from Norton Anthology and Penguin Books. The movement shaped conversations alongside developments in translation studies involving figures like Seamus Heaney and Constance Garnett-style editors, while continuing to inform debates at forums including The Poetry Foundation, Los Angeles Review of Books, The New Republic, Partisan Review, and scholarly symposia at British Library and Library of Congress.

Category:Poetry movements