New Criticism: is an American literary criticism movement which emphasized close reading of poems, concentrating on verbal complexities of literary works, especially poems, considered as self-sufficient objects without attention to their origins. The term originates from John Crowe Ransom's book The New Criticism (1941), in which he surveyed theories developed in England by T. S. Eliot, I. A. Richards, and William Empson, together with the work of American critic Yvor Winters. Before this close reading (or explication de texte) was considered as inferior criticism and not the work of a serious scholar. The New Criticism not only replaced this notion, but also became the academic orthodoxy of 1950's till 70's and especially with the publication of the very influential Understanding Poetry by Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren. Other critics usually referred under this heading, despite their differences, include Allen Tate, R. P. Blackmur, W. K. Wimsatt Jr., and Kenneth Burke.The outstanding works of New Criticism are Brook's The Well-Wrought Urn (1947) and Wimsatt's The Verbal Icon (1954).