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"Empson, William, 1906-1984 Criticism and interpretation."
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On Empson
Are literary critics writers? As Michael Wood says, \"Not all critics are writers--perhaps most of them are not--and some of them are better when they don't try to be.\" The British critic and poet William Empson (1906-84), one of the most important and influential critics of the twentieth century, was an exception--a critic who was not only a writer but also a great one. In this brief book, Wood, himself one of the most gifted writers among contemporary critics, explores Empson as a writer, a distinguished poet whose criticism is a brilliant literary performance--and proof that the act of reading can be an unforgettable adventure. Drawing out the singularity and strength of Empson's writing, including its unfailing wit, Wood traces the connections between Empson's poetry and criticism from his first and best-known critical works, Seven Types of Ambiguity and Some Versions of Pastoral, to later books such as Milton's God and The Structure of Complex Words. Wood shows why this pioneer of close reading was both more and less than the inventor of New Criticism - more because he was the greatest English critic since Coleridge, and didn't belong to any school; and less because he had severe differences with many contemporary critics, especially those who dismissed the importance of an author's intentions. Beautifully written and rich with insight, On Empson is an elegant introduction to a unique writer for whom literature was a nonstop form of living.
BOOK
Some versions of Empson
William Empson was one of the most important poet-critics of the twentieth century, and continues to influence and inspire writers from many divergent critical traditions. Following on recent scholarly developments, this timely collection of essays provides a fully-rounded examination of Empson’s life, work, inheritance, and influence. This is the first volume of critical essays on Empson to be published in over a decade, and the first to consider the full range of his work, studying his poetry alongside his criticism in order to reassess the scale of his achievement. It also includes the first publication of a substantial interview with Empson in 1970, in which he looks back over his career and discusses the composition and reception of his work. The collection examines Empson’s oeuvre from a variety of angles - aesthetic, philosophical, psychological, linguistic, scientific, socio-political, religious, and sexual - and features essays from an outstanding line-up of emerging and established scholars. Some Versions of Empson demonstrates the poet-critic’s continuing importance for literary and cultural criticism, and sets the agenda for studies of his work in the twenty-first century.
eBook
The birth of New criticism : conflict and conciliation in the early work of William Empson, I.A. Richards, Laura Riding, and Robert Graves
Amid competing claims about who first developed the theories and practices that became known as New Criticism - the critical method that rose alongside Modernism - literary historians have generally given the lion's share of credit to William Empson and I.A. Richards. In The Birth of New Criticism Donald Childs challenges this consensus and provides a new and authoritative narrative of the movement's origins. At the centre stand Robert Graves and Laura Riding, two poet-critics who have been written out of the history of New Criticism. Childs brings to light the long-forgotten early criticism of Graves to detail the ways in which his interpretive methods and ideas evolved into the practice of \"close reading,\" demonstrating that Graves played such a fundamental part in forming both Empson's and Richards's critical thinking that the story of twentieth-century literary criticism must be re-evaluated and re-told. Childs also examines the important influence that Riding's work had on Graves, Empson, and Richards, establishing the importance of this long-neglected thinker and critic. A provocative and cogently argued work, The Birth of New Criticism is both an important intellectual history of the movement and a sharply observed account of the cultural politics of its beginnings and legacy.
eBook
The Birth of New Criticism
Amid competing claims about who first developed the theories and practices that became known as New Criticism - the critical method that rose alongside Modernism - literary historians have generally given the lion's share of credit to William Empson and I.A. Richards. In The Birth of New Criticism Donald Childs challenges this consensus and provides a new and authoritative narrative of the movement's origins. At the centre stand Robert Graves and Laura Riding, two poet-critics who have been written out of the history of New Criticism. Childs brings to light the long-forgotten early criticism of Graves to detail the ways in which his interpretive methods and ideas evolved into the practice of \"close reading,\" demonstrating that Graves played such a fundamental part in forming both Empson's and Richards's critical thinking that the story of twentieth-century literary criticism must be re-evaluated and re-told. Childs also examines the important influence that Riding's work had on Graves, Empson, and Richards, establishing the importance of this long-neglected thinker and critic. A provocative and cogently argued work, The Birth of New Criticism is both an important intellectual history of the movement and a sharply observed account of the cultural politics of its beginnings and legacy.
eBook
Empson, Wilson Knight, Barber, Kott
Great Shakespeareans offers a systematic account of those figures who have had the greatest influence on the interpretation, understanding and cultural reception of Shakespeare, both nationally and internationally. In this volume, leading scholars assess the contribution of G. Wilson Knight, William Empson, C.L. Barber and Jan Kott to the afterlife and reception of Shakespeare and his plays. Each substantial contribution assesses the double impact of Shakespeare on the figure covered and of the figure on the understanding, interpretation and appreciation of Shakespeare, provide a sketch of their subject's intellectual and professional biography and an account of the wider cultural context, including comparison with other figures or works within the same field.
eBook
Truth and Equivocation in Constantine Cavafy’s Poems of Antiquity
The Greek poet Constantine P. Cavafy (1883–1933) spent most of his life in the Egyptian city of Alexandria. Cavafy liked to think of himself as an historical poet. A large proportion of his poetry is set outside of Greece in the eastern, southern and south-eastern Mediterranean world at a time when the centre of Greek culture had shifted from ‘mainland Greece’ to cities such as Alexandria and Antioch, when a cosmopolitan Greek culture was contained by the Roman Empire, and later when Christianity began to take hold and challenge the Hellenic world and its values. Cavafy also liked to think of all his poetry – whether the setting was his own time and place or that of antiquity – in three categories of historical, philosophical and hedonistic, while acknowledging their overlap.
This paper concentrates on his poems of antiquity, and within that on those poems which deal with questions of ambiguity, equivocation, and various forms of non-truth telling. The paper’s critical-theoretical beginning relies on the equivocal prophecies of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, William Empson’s notions of ambiguity and dramatic irony, and Cavafy’s theatrical representation of history, and then turns to Derrida’s essay on the history of the lie.
Journal Article
William Empson
William Empson: Prophet Against Sacrifice provides the most coherent account of Empson's diverse career to date. While exploring the richness of Empson's comic genius, Paul H. Fry serves to discredit the appropriation of his name in recent polemic by the conflicting parties of deconstruction and politicized cultural criticism. He argues that Empson is a larger, more important figure than the orthodox in either camp can acknowledge, deserving to be considered alongside such versatile critics as Walter Benjamin, Kenneth Burke and Roland Barthes.
eBook