This concept was put forward by Lanson, the main critic of the new criticism. He first applied the philosophical term "noumenon" to literary research.

The new criticism holds that literary works are a complete multi-level artistic object and an independent and self-sufficient world, and literary works themselves are the source of literary activities. It has become the theoretical core of new criticism to study the characteristics of literature from the perspective of works themselves. Vincent and beardsley, who hold the same view, expounded their views from another angle, and therefore put forward two famous concepts: one is intentional fallacy. The second is the fallacy of feeling. Vincent Sartre and beardsley regard the exploration of the author's intention as fallacy, and their sharp edges point directly to positivism or romantic literary criticism. At the same time, they think it is a fallacy to judge the quality of a work by the radian of readers' emotional fluctuation. In the organic process of the art constructed by writers, works and readers, the new criticism cut off the inextricable connection between the two ends without hesitation. In this sense, the new criticism is an authentic work ontology. Context theory is the core problem of semantic analysis of new criticism and the premise of understanding new criticism methods. This theory was put forward by Richards and later accepted and applied by New Criticism.

Context refers to the relationship between a word, sentence or paragraph and its context, which determines the meaning of the word, sentence or paragraph. On this basis, Richards further expanded the scope of context. One is the discourse context when writing at that time, and the other refers to the "names representing a group of events that are reproduced at the same time" embodied in the text. Here, words contain historical accumulation, and a word may imply a thrilling event or some strong emotion. It can be seen that the context theory of new criticism has a very broad vision, which embodies the new understanding of literary language by new criticism. Context constitutes a semantic field of meaning interaction, in which words are interwoven vertically and horizontally, producing rich meanings.