The New Criticism and the teaching of Rhetoric

Abstract

The purpose of this papel is to deal with lhe rhetorical -or, rather, neorhetorical- conception of some of the more important American new critics, in order to demonstrate that while the task of regenerating the teaching of literature undertaken by the New Criticism in the thirties was enormously fruitful in the universitary classrooms of the United States, their concern for the correct teaching of Rhetoric at the same levels of instruction was of no less breadth and relevance.
The main starting point of the essay is Cleanth Brooks and Robert P. Warren's Modern Rhetoric, which, as the authors themselves point out in the preface to the fourth edition (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1979), has to be considered as an effective teaching instrument for the instructor and a simple and useful textbook for the student.
Following analysis of the cardinal points of this work, we conclude with an attempt to determine the essential significance of the rhetorical contribution of the New Criticism within the general frame of Neorhetoric.