After reading Critical Theory Today by Lois Tyson, I am intrigued by how new critics believed that the interpretive work they were doing could lead to one single best objective interpretation of a text. By only looking at the text itself, new critics believed the text “would itself dictate how it would be interpreted” (Tyson 142). However, there is no objective way to evaluate what constitutes “the best interpretation” of a text. Clearly the creators of new criticism were rejecting the idea that every reader brings to the text their own backgrounds and bias, while at the same time evaluating a text based on their perception of what is “best.” Did new critics genuinely not believe that context influences works or were they choosing to neglect this contextual influence?

By focusing solely on the text of a work without regard to any context, the new critic could easily be overlooking a major creative element of a text. If a major element of the text is being overlooked than how can they say that they have formed the best interpretation of the work? And if there were one single best interpretation of a text, then why is it necessary to argue for your interpretation? Wouldn’t everyone in the literary community agree with your view, as they have come to the same single interpretation that you have?

New critics have to evaluate which form of a word best fits with their perceived “best interpretation,” which means they have to be aware in some way, shape, or form that others can argue differently for the interpretation of the text. There are definite limitations to how objective their criticism becomes once they have to make these choices rooted in personal opinion of the text and its meaning. If there are multiple different definitions for the words, then how objective can new critics actually be in interpreting the text when they must only pick one definition as correct?

To new critics, “[a text’s] meaning is as objective as its physical existence on the page” (Tyson 131). However, in “Caged Bird” by Maya Angelou, without context the text loses a lot of its importance. Through a new critic’s eye, “Caged Bird” is taken very literally to present the dichotomy between freedom and imprisonment. In Angelou’s poem the free bird “floats downstream” (3) and “names the sky his own” (26) because his normal bodily functions have not been hindered in any way. In opposition to the free bird, there is not only a cage around the imprisoned bird, but also “his wings are clipped and / his feet are tied” (Angelou 12-13). The voice of this bird is all that it has left to use in protest of its current and potentially never-ending conditions. The poem opens with the free bird and the freedom that the caged bird at the end of the poem is still singing and longing for.  

Though this interpretation is able to address important aspects of the poem, by removing the broader social and historical contexts of the poem from consideration into its meaning, the poem loses part of its significance. The fact that this poem was written by an African American poet during the Civil Rights Movement is important in knowing that the birds are symbols representing the white man and the enslaved African American. New critics are in part only able to scratch the surface of literary analysis of a text due primarily to the fact that context often and almost always plays an important role in the creation and meaning behind a text.

Works Cited

Angelou, Maya. “Caged Bird.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48989/caged-bird.

Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: a User-Friendly Guide. Routledge, 2015.