Words to know
formalism
An approach to literature that focuses on the text itself: its form, structure, language and devices, and how they create meaning.
New Criticism
An influential formalist movement of the mid-twentieth century that practised close reading of the text as a unified whole.
ambiguity
The quality of having more than one possible meaning at once, which formalist critics treat as a source of richness rather than confusion.
paradox
A statement that seems self-contradictory but reveals a truth, such as a fire consumed with that which it was nourished by.
quatrain
A stanza or group of four lines; a Shakespearean sonnet has three quatrains and a couplet.
volta
The turn in a sonnet, where the argument or tone shifts; in a Shakespearean sonnet it often comes at the couplet.
Reading the words on the page
In Grade 11 you climbed the ladder from observation to pattern to interpretation to claim, and wrote layered paragraphs (word, line, pattern, thesis). That method has a name in literary theory: it grows out of formalism, and especially the New Criticism, an approach that shaped how English was taught in universities for much of the twentieth century.
Formalist critics argued that a poem should be read as a made object: its meaning lives in its words, images, sounds and structure. They looked for tension, paradox, irony and ambiguity, and for how these are held together in a unified whole. Two famous warnings from this tradition:
- Do not judge a poem by what you guess the poet intended (the poet's intention is not on the page).
- Do not judge a poem only by how it makes you feel (feelings are evidence, but not the meaning itself).
Today few critics use formalism alone, but every lens you will study depends on close reading. Formalism is the foundation; the other lenses build on it.
The text: Shakespeare's Sonnet 73
Published in 1609 in Shakespeare's Sonnets; public domain. Spelling follows a common modernized edition; the apostrophes in ruin'd and Consum'd show that the -ed ending is not sounded as an extra syllable.
That time of year thou mayst in me behold (1) When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang (2) Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, (3) Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. (4)
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day (5) As after sunset fadeth in the west, (6) Which by and by black night doth take away, (7) Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. (8)
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire (9) That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, (10) As the death-bed whereon it must expire, (11) Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by. (12)
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong, (13) To love that well which thou must leave ere long. (14)
Glossary: mayst = may; boughs = branches; choirs = the part of a church where singers sit; late = recently; by and by = soon; Death's second self = Death's double; expire = die, and also breathe out; perceiv'st = perceive; ere long = before long.
Ambiguity is evidence, not a problem
The critic William Empson used the phrase Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang as an example in his book Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930): bare branches and ruined church choir stalls overlap in one image, and both meanings work at once. A formalist essay does not choose one meaning and hide the other; it explains what the overlap achieves. Here, nature and a sacred building decay together, which makes the speaker's ageing feel both natural and like the ruin of something holy.
Precise words for analysis (expectation 2.3)
Replace shows and creates with verbs that name what language does: compresses, accelerates, stalls, undercuts, softens, seals, reverses, intensifies, echoes, mirrors, hesitates, withholds. Name tones precisely: elegiac, resigned, tender, rueful, foreboding, consoling, insistent. Check each word fits the evidence.