Contextual criticism

The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms - Ross Murfin 2018

Contextual criticism

Contextual criticism: A revolutionary offshoot of the New Criticism that incorporated and modified the basic analytical methods and underlying outlook of its parent form. Eliseo Vivas and Murray Krieger shaped and defined this mode of literary criticism, which emphasizes close readings of individual texts and evaluations of those texts based on their internal structure and aesthetic impact. Although by the late 1960s contextual criticism was no longer in vogue, some of its assumptions and analytical methods persist in more contemporary critical approaches, such as deconstruction.