Barton, Brooks, And Childs: A Comparison Of The New Criticism And Canonical Criticism -- By: J. Dickson Brown

Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 36:4 (Dec 1993)
Article: Barton, Brooks, And Childs: A Comparison Of The New Criticism And Canonical Criticism
Author: J. Dickson Brown


Barton, Brooks, And Childs:
A Comparison Of The New Criticism
And Canonical Criticism

J. Dickson Brown*

One of the more fruitful approaches to Biblical interpretation is the use of tools from other intellectual disciplines. An example of interdisciplinary perspective is that of John Barton, who argues that Brevard S. Childs’ canonical criticism has been significantly influenced by the new criticism of English literature. He observes their shared emphasis on an “autonomous text,” their deemphasis of authorial intent, and their interest in placing texts into an historical framework:

On all three counts—emphasis on the “text itself “ as a finished product rather than as a vehicle for expressing an author’s ideas; indifference to authorial intention; and concern for the integration of individual texts into a literary canon, which contributes to their meaning—Childs stands very close to the New Critics.1

I will examine Barton’s proposal with special attention to his three points of comparison. Finally, I will conclude that Barton’s conclusion is highly overstated and that canonical criticism only bears superficial resemblances to the new criticism.

I. Summary Of Brooks And The New Criticism

1. Autonomy of the text. Barton is essentially correct when he describes the new criticism as a corrective movement.2 It was a conscious reaction to romanticism in the field of English literature, which held sway roughly between 1770 and 1850. While the pens of romantic poets like Wordsworth, Coleridge, Burns and Blake turned to nature and exalted individualism, the critics of that era were intensely interested in the personal lives of the poets. Scholars searched biographies and noted contemporary history, looking for new insights to the meaning of poems. The following excerpt from the romantic period shows the biographical and historical orientation of literary criticism before the advent of the new criticism:

Moreover, [Coleridge’s] acquaintance and ripening friendship with Wordsworth in 1796 and 1797, immensely quickened his intellectual powers, gave a

* Captain J. Dickson Brown is a United States Army chaplain assigned to the 229th Attack Helicopter Regiment (Airborne), Fort Bragg, NC 28307–5000.

profounder resonance to his emotional life, and deepened his sympathy for individual and concrete things in life and nature. As a result the religious poems of 1797 and 1798 were born of personal experience rather than of abstract speculation… The abstract “God diffused through ...

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