Austin Warren - Warren As Critic

Warren As Critic

Generally, Warren described himself as an "old New Critic" and did not disagree with his contemporary structuralist critics, though he modestly confessed that he did not always understand them. Despite this self-description, Warren was independent in his critical views, often refusing to approach literature from any one set of theoretical methodology. He was not a religious critic, but he often approached works in the contexts of spirituality and Christianity.

In a preface to his essay collection, Connections, Warren professed his critical stance:

As a literary critic, I have no "method," no specialty, but am what is called, in another discipline, a "general practitioner" . . . I look through my repertory for the methods and the mixture of methods appropriate to the case before me—in consequence of which the proportion of stylistic analysis to biographical, or biographical to ideological, will be found to vary from essay to essay.

Warren's generalism, however, was not entirely undecided. He expressed ideals commonly referred to by other New Critics of his time when he said that "The final necessity for the critic is, ideally, space and time for withdrawal, for critical distancing; absorption, withdrawal, often repeated, are constantly procedures of criticism."