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

[Sara van den Berg]

Empson is of course a major critic, and his essential book certainly
predated the New Critics.  However, for American higher education and
several generations of postwar students, the New Critics' way of reading
poetry, which privileged the controlled ambiguity of meaning in poetry and
emphasized certain poets (e.g., Donne), was popularized by Brooks and
Warren.  Needless to say, you are free to disregard this comment.  The
conversation on this list has already gone in other directions.

Sara van den Berg

On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 3:18 PM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:

>
>
> 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
>
> _______________________________________________
> Milton-L mailing list
> Milton-L at lists.richmond.edu
> Manage your list membership and access list archives at
> http://lists.richmond.edu/mailman/listinfo/milton-l
>
> Milton-L web site: http://johnmilton.org/
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.richmond.edu/pipermail/milton-l/attachments/20081119/8e73a97a/attachment.html