[Milton-L] interpreting poems variously [was Satan etc.]

[Carrol Cox]

Sara van den Berg wrote:
> 
> The idea that controlled ambiguity of meaning is a constitutive
> characteristic of poetry was developed by the New Critics, and is
> exemplified in Understanding Poetry, an influential textbook published
> by Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks.

Oh please. Can't we even keep 20th-c history reasonably accurate.

William Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity. 1930. The label "new
criticism" was coined seven years or so later by John Crowe Ransom.
Empson was definitely NOT, repeat NOT, a New Critic.

Repeat: Empson, who wrote a book on ambiguity in criticism, was NOT a
New Critic.

Incidentally, it's still a wonderful book, that will be read when no one
even knows who Cleanth Brooks was -- perhaps an executive of a men's
clothing company.

Carrol