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Why did New Criticism often set aside an author’s biography and historical background?

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Antique book open to the frontispiece of The Iliad of Homer, showing the title and an engraved portrait of a bearded man, with old books in the background. — literature *The Iliad*, an epic of the Trojan War attributed to the ancient Greek poet Homer, is considered a foundational work of Western literature.

New Criticism prioritized the intrinsic value of a literary work, treating it as an independent unit of meaning rather than a reflection of the creator's life or historical context. By focusing exclusively on the text itself, New Critics sought to avoid the intentional fallacy—the error of judging a work based on the author's presumed purpose or mental state at the time of writing.12

This approach was rooted in the concept of autotelism, the belief that a work of art is complete in itself and does not require external justification. New Critics argued that relying on biographical or historical data forced the critic to act as a historian or psychologist rather than a literary analyst. Instead, they utilized close reading to examine the text's internal structure, such as its use of metaphor, irony, and paradox. They maintained that poetic form and content are inseparable; therefore, the "meaning" of a work is found only within its specific language, rendering external context irrelevant to the interpretation of the art.3214