This complicates the basic trend of New Criticism which simply calls for a close textual reading without considering affective response or the author's intentions.
While Burke also avoids affective response and authorial intention, he specifically considers pieces of art and literature as systematic reflections of society and societal behavior.
In Franco Moretti's article "The Dialectic of Fear", he addresses the methods by which Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker highlight the problems and inconsistencies within their societies through their respective novels Frankenstein, and Dracula.
Moretti notes that the fear in Frankenstein lies in the protagonist and not the reader, so as to encourage the reader to "reflect on a number of important problems (the development of science, the ethic of family, respect for tradition) and agree – rationally – that these are threatened by powerful and hidden forces," (Moretti, 12).
Kenneth Burke would approach these pieces of literature through their statements on society, and push for sociological critics to standardize methods like the ones employed by Shelley and Stoker as a way of regarding art as a function of, and functioning in, society – a criticism technique that "cut[s] across previously established disciplines" (Adams, 942).