It is in the work of Wimsatt and Beardsly where the desire to focus only on the text at hand became to take shape in New Criticism. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsly published two incredibly influential sister essays “The Intentional Fallacy” and “The Affective Fallacy” which argued against the consideration of both the author’s intention and the reader’s response as valid literary criticism. In 1942 Cleanth Brooks published “The Language of Paradox”, an essay which would further develop the close reading techniques of paradox and unity which New Criticism became known for. In 1938, Brooks and Warren published a revolutionary textbook entitled Understanding Poetry which taught the new critical skills of close reading while valuing the principles of interpretation and poetic form. The name of the movement comes from the 1941 book The New Criticism by John Crowe Ransom, a professor at Vanderbilt University who taught and influenced Allen Tate, Cleanth Brooks, and Robert Penn Warren who in turn became the core group of new critics known as the Agrarians. a groundbreaking development in English literary studies which would help the new critics make close reading a common practice in the study of literature. During the magazine's publication, Scrutiny: “stressed the centrality of rigorous critical analysis, a disciplined attention to the 'words on the page',”. While close reading (explication de texte) was prominent in French literary studies during the early 20th century it was a non-academic practice in English literary studies of the time. However the biggest impact which Scrutiny had on New Criticism was in helping to develop the practice of close reading.
Knights founded Scrutiny, a magazine of literary criticism which championed the moral centrality of English studies maintaining that the evaluation of literary works reflects deeper judgements about history and society as a whole. Eliot were incredibly influential as he began to focus on the importance of symbology, eventually developing his idea of the “objective correlative”.
While the literary movement known as New Criticism is generally thought of as a phenomenon originating in the American South, much of the foundations of New Criticism were laid across the sea in England and France. New Criticism focused on the aesthetic value of literature, or “the text in itself”, doing away with the intentionality of both the author and the reader. New Criticism attempted to develop a, "rigorous, systematic, theorized approach to literature" in opposition to the impressionism which was common practice in the academic institutions of the time. New Criticism was a Formalist movement in literary theory which rose to prominence in universities during the 1930s and lasted as a common practice until the 1970s, though its incredible influence on literary studies is still strongly felt. 4.1 The Silence of the Lambs (1991 film).
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