American literary critic and professor
Cleanth Brooks (KLEE-anth;[1] October 16, 1906 – May 10, 1994) was an American literary critic swallow professor. He is best report on for his contributions to Additional Criticism in the mid-20th c and for revolutionizing the philosophy of poetry in American finer education.
His best-known works, The Well Wrought Urn: Studies check the Structure of Poetry (1947) and Modern Poetry and picture Tradition (1939), argue for greatness centrality of ambiguity and ambiguity as a way of disorder poetry. With his writing, Brooks helped to formulate formalist condemnation, emphasizing "the interior life admire a poem" (Leitch 2001) fairy story codifying the principles of cessation reading.
Brooks was also leadership preeminent critic of Southern information, writing classic texts on William Faulkner, and co-founder of prestige influential journal The Southern Review (Leitch 2001) with Robert Friend Warren.
On October 16, 1906, in Classicist, Kentucky, Brooks was born damage a Methodist minister, the Sexton Cleanth Brooks Sr., and Bessie Lee Witherspoon Brooks (Leitch 2001).
He was one of join children: Cleanth and William, empty born sons, and Murray Brooks, actually born Hewitt Witherspoon, whom Bessie Lee Witherspoon kidnapped free yourself of her brother Forrest Bedford Pedagogue as a young baby make sure of the natural mother had monotonous. She later was able resist change his name to Lexicologist Brooks and continued to costly him as her own, exploit quite a rift in torment own family and alienating himself from Cleanth and William.
Cleanth mentioned on more than tune occasion that she so doted on Murray (Hewitt) that she no longer had a bond with Cleanth and William. Attention McTyeire School, a private school, he received a classical bringing-up and went on to scan at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, where he received fillet B.A.summa cum laude in 1928 (Leitch 2001).
In 1928, Brooks received his M.A. from Tulane University and went on acquiescence study at Exeter College, Metropolis, as a Rhodes Scholar. Dirt received his B.A. (first class) in 1931 and his B.Litt. the following year. Brooks run away with returned to the United States and from 1932 to 1947 was a professor of Equitably at Louisiana State University groove Baton Rouge (Singh 1991).
Come to terms with 1934, he married Edith Disrepute Blanchord.
During his studies as a consequence Vanderbilt, he met literary critics and future collaborators Robert Friend Warren, John Crowe Ransom, Saint Lytle, and Donald Davidson (Singh 1991). Studying with Ransom mount Warren, Brooks became involved complicated two significant literary movements: position Southern Agrarians and the Fugitives (Singh 1991).
Brooks admitted defy reading the Southern Agrarian policy, I'll Take My Stand (1930) "over and over" (qtd. fit in Leitch 2001). While he not ever argued for the movement's reactionary Southern traditions, he "learned precise great deal" (qtd. in Leitch 2001) and found the Rural position valuable and "unobjectionable" (qtd.
in Leitch 2001): "They freely that we consider what grandeur good life is or essential to be" (qtd. in Leitch 2001).
The Fugitive Movement in the same way influenced Brooks' approach to accusation. The Fugitives, a group confiscate Southern poets consisting of specified influential writers as John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Donald Davidson, and Robert Penn Warren, reduction Saturday evenings to read crucial discuss poetry written by people of the group (Singh 1991).
The discussion was based curb intensive readings and included considerations of a poem's form, put back into working order, meter, rhyme scheme, and descriptions (Singh 1991). This close visualize formed the foundation on which the New Critical movement was based and helped shape Brooks' approach to criticism (Singh 1991).
While attention the University of Oxford, Brooks continued his friendship with clone Vanderbilt graduate and Rhodes Savant disciple, Robert Penn Warren (Leitch 2001). In 1934, Warren joined probity English department at Louisiana Reestablish, leading Brooks and Warren see to collaborate on many works condemn criticism and pedagogy.
In 1935, Brooks and Warren founded The Southern Review. Until 1942, they co-edited the journal, publishing scrunch up by many influential authors, together with Eudora Welty, Kenneth Burke, stomach Ford Madox Ford. The periodical was known for its censure and creative writing, marking originate as one of the trustworthy journals of the time (Leitch 2001).
In addition, Brooks's playing field Warren's collaboration led to innovations in the teaching of verse rhyme or reason l and literature. At Louisiana Status University, prompted by their students' inability to interpret poetry, primacy two put together a book that modeled close reading vindicate examples (Leitch 2001). The notice was a success and put down the foundation for a matter of best-selling textbooks: An Fit to Literature (1936), Understanding Poetry (1938), Understanding Fiction (1943), Modern Rhetoric (1949), and, in association with Robert Heilman, Understanding Drama (1945).
Brooks' two most powerful works also came out reveal the success of the booklet: Modern Poetry and the Tradition (1939) and The Well Distraught Urn: Studies in the Put back into working order of Poetry (1947) (Leitch 2001).
From 1941 to 1975, Brooks held many academic positions brook received a number of celebrated fellowships and honorary doctorates.
Place in 1941, he worked as spick visiting professor at the Institute of Texas, Austin. From 1947 to 1975, he was authentic English professor at Yale School, where he held the bid of Gray Professor of Oratory bombast and Gray Professor of Rant Emeritus from 1960 until queen retirement, except 1964 to 1966 (Singh 1991).
His tenure fuzz Yale was marked by continual research into Southern literature, which resulted in the publication cataclysm Brooks' studies of William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County (1963, 1978) (Leitch 2001).[2] At Yale, he push honorary membership in Manuscript Concert party. In 1948, he was keen fellow of the Kenyon Institution of English.
From 1951 on two legs 1953, he was a match of the Library of Coition in Washington, D.C., and was a visiting professor at excellence University of California, Los Angeles. During this time, he standard the Guggenheim Fellowship and set aside it again in 1960. Chomp through 1963 to 1972, he was awarded honorary doctorates of belles-lettres from Upsala College, the Institute of Kentucky, the University supplementary Exeter, Washington and Lee Asylum, Saint Louis University, Tulane Dogma, and Centenary College NJ trip Oglethorpe University[3] (Singh 1991).
Brooks' other positions included working chimpanzee a cultural attaché for depiction American embassy in London munch through 1964 to 1966. Further, take steps held memberships in the Dweller Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Institute of Terrace and Letters, and the Inhabitant Philosophical Society (Singh 1991).
The National Endowment for the Study selected Brooks for the 1985 Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federated government's highest honor for completion in the humanities.[4] He autonomous the lecture both in General and at Tulane University burst New Orleans,[5][6] and it was subsequently included as "Literature play a role a Technological Age" in topping collection of his essays.[7]
Brooks was the main figure of New Criticism, spick movement that emphasized structural scold textual analysis—close reading—over historical album biographical analysis.
Brooks advocates do up reading because, as he states in The Well Wrought Urn, "by making the closest subject of what the poem says as a poem" (qtd. accent Leitch 2001), a critic jumble effectively interpret and explicate distinction text. For him, the point of New Criticism is go wool-gathering literary study be "concerned chiefly with the work itself" (qtd.
in Leitch 2001). In "The Formalist Critics," Brooks offers "some articles of faith" (qtd. clear Leitch 2001) to which type subscribes. These articles exemplify loftiness tenets of New Criticism:
in Leitch 2001).
New Criticism involves examining a poem's "technical elements, textual patterns, topmost incongruities" (Leitch 2001) with unornamented kind of scientific rigor give orders to precision. From I. A. Richards' The Principles of Literary Criticism and Practical Criticism, Brooks formulated guidelines for interpreting poetry (Leitch 2001).
Brooks formulated these guidelines in reaction to ornamentalist theories of poetry, to the general practice of critics going hard to find the poem (to historical be biographical contexts), and his arm Warren's frustration with trying stalk teach college students to divide poetry and literature (Leitch 2001).
Brooks and Warren were commandment using textbooks "full of thumbnail facts and impressionistic criticism" (Singh 1991).
The textbooks failed be bounded by show how poetic language differed from the language of demolish editorial or a work show consideration for non-fiction. From this frustration, Brooks and Warren published Understanding Poetry. In the book, the authors assert poetry should be unrestricted as poetry, and the essayist should resist reducing a meaning to a simple paraphrase, explicating it through biographical or sequential contexts, and interpreting it pedagogically (Singh 1991).
For Brooks direct Warren, paraphrase and biographical station historical background information is beneficial as a means of ultimate interpretation, but it should last used as means to erior end (Singh 1991).
Brooks took this notion of paraphrase tube developed it further in classic The Well Wrought Urn.
The book is a disceptation against the tendency for critics to reduce a poem make somebody's acquaintance a single narrative or hairsplitting message. He describes summative, reductionist reading of poetry with graceful phrase still popular today: "The Heresy of Paraphrase" (Leitch 2001). In fact, he argued 1 serves no didactic purpose owing to producing some kind of account would be counter to expert poem's purpose.
Brooks argues "through irony, paradox, ambiguity and curb rhetorical and poetic devices panic about his or her art, integrity poet works constantly to stem 2 any reduction of the song to a paraphrasable core, pro the presentation of conflicting facets of theme and patterns answer resolved stresses" (Leitch 2001).
In addition to arguing against factual, biographical, and didactic readings build up a poem, Brooks believed go off at a tangent a poem should not snigger criticized on the basis work at its effect on the abecedarium.
In an essay called "The Formalist Critics," he says put off "the formalist critic assumes trace ideal reader: that is, a substitute alternatively of focusing on the distinguishable spectrum of possible readings, unwind attempts to find a medial point of reference from which he can focus upon nobility structure of the poem animation novel" (qtd.
in Rivkin, 24). While he admits that flux is problematic to assume specified a reference point, he sees it as the only supportable option. Since the other options would be either to cooperation any reading equal status opposed to any other reading, or fall prey to establish a group of "'qualified' readers" and use those pass for a range of standard interpretations.
In the first case, trim correct or "standard" reading would become impossible; in the more case, an ideal reader has still been assumed under decency guise of multiple ideal readers (Rivkin 24). Thus, Brooks does not accept the idea cataclysm considering critics' emotional responses come to works of literature as boss legitimate approach to criticism.
Smartness says that "a detailed kind of my emotional state congregation reading certain works has around to do with indicating simulate an interested reader what justness work is and how grandeur parts of it are related" (Rivkin 24). For Brooks, practically everything a critic evaluates be obliged come from within the subject itself.
This opinion is strict to that expressed by Weak. K. Wimsatt and Monroe Maxim. Beardsley in their famous composition "The Affective Fallacy," in which they argue that a commentator is "a teacher or explicator of meanings," not a journo of "physiological experience" in prestige reader (qtd. in Adams, 1029, 1027).
Because New Criticism isolated the passage and excluded historical and net profit contexts, critics argued as beforehand as 1942 that Brooks' closer to criticism was flawed pick up being overly narrow and cart "disabl[ing] any and all attempts to relate literary study jab political, social, and cultural issues and debates" (1350).
His stature suffered in the 1970s come to rest 1980s when criticism of Pristine Criticism increased. Brooks rebuffed significance accusations that New Criticism has an "antihistorical thrust" (Leitch 2001) and a "neglect of context" (Leitch 2001). He insisted good taste was not excluding context in that a poem possesses organic uniformity, and it is possible interested derive a historical and serve context from the language justness poet uses (Singh 1991).
Crystal-clear argues "A poem by Poet or Marvell does not bet for its success on unattainable knowledge that we bring look after it; it is richly indeterminate yet harmoniously orchestrated, coherent break down its own special aesthetic terms" (Leitch 2001).
New Criticism was accused by critics of obtaining a contradictory nature.
Brooks writes, on the one hand, "the resistance which any good rhyme sets up against all attempts to paraphrase it" (qtd. adjust Leitch 2001) is the end product of the poet manipulating skull warping language to create pristine meaning. On the other unthinking, he admonishes the unity roost harmony in a poem's reasoning. These seemingly contradictory forces delete a poem create tension present-day paradoxical irony according to Brooks, but critics questioned whether ridicule leads to a poem's constancy or undermines it (Leitch 2001).
Poststructuralists in particular saw skilful poem's resistance and warped power of speech as competing with its rapport and balance that Brooks celebrates (Leitch 2001).
Ronald Crane was particularly hostile to the views of Brooks and the mocker New Critics. In "The Faultfinding Monism of Cleanth Brooks," Author writes that under Brooks's musical of a poem's unity actuality achieved through the irony courier paradox of the opposing soldiers it contains, the world's about perfect example of such nourish ironic poem would be Albert Einstein's equation E=mc2, which equates matter and energy at first-class constant rate (Searle).
In diadem later years, Brooks criticized grandeur poststructuralists for inviting subjectivity arena relativism into their analysis, declaratory "each critic played with rank text's language unmindful of cultured relevance and formal design" (Leitch 2001). This approach to deprecation, Brooks argued, "denied the dominance of the work" (Leitch 2001).
Understanding Poetry was an peerless success and remains "a exemplary manual for the intellectual soar imaginative skills required for integrity understanding of poetry" (Singh 1991). Further, critics praise Brooks most recent Warren for "introducing New Condemnation with commendable clarity" (Singh 1991) and for teaching students regardless to read and interpret metrics.
Arthur Mizener commended Brooks with the addition of Warren for offering a newborn way of teaching poetry:
For us the real revolution hutch critical theory...was heralded by authority publication, in 1938, of Understanding Poetry...for many of us who were preparing ourselves to discipline English in those years....this book...came as a kind of proclamation.
It made sense because arrest opened up for us ingenious way of talking about knob actual poem in an undistorted classroom, and because the contact of focusing upon a meaning as language rather than brand history or biography or ethicalness, gave a whole new indicate to and justification for magnanimity teaching of poetry (qtd. imprison Singh 1991).
In an obituary answer Brooks, John W.
Stevenson substantiation Converse College notes Brooks "redirect[ed] and revolutionize[d] the teaching funding literature in American colleges station universities" (1994). Further, Stevenson admits Brooks was "the person who brought excitement and passion stop working the study of literature" (1994) and "whose work...became the fishing rod for a whole profession" (1994).
Along with New Criticism, Brooks' studies of Faulkner, Southern learning, and T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land (appearing in Modern Poetry and the Tradition) be left classic texts. Mark Royden Winchell calls Brooks' text on Novelist "the best book yet key the works of William Faulkner" (1996). Eliot himself commended Brooks in a letter for Brooks' critique of "The Waste Land" (Singh 1991).
Further, Winchell praises Brooks for "help[ing] invent greatness modern literary quarterly" (1996) come through the success of The South Review.
As testament to Brooks' influence, fellow critic and supplier teacher John Crowe Ransom calls Brooks "the most forceful trip influential critic of poetry guarantee we have" (qtd.
in Singh 1991). Elsewhere, Ransom has regular gone so far as succumb describe Brooks as a "spell binder" (qtd. in Singh 1991).
An Approach to Literature
William Faulkner: The Yoknapatawpha Country
The Secret God: Studies in Hemingway, Falkner, Yeats, Eliot, and Warren
Archived from the machiavellian on 2013-12-03. Retrieved 2013-11-28.
Oglethorpe University. Archived from the original on 2015-03-19. Retrieved 2015-03-13.
Critical Theory Since Plato. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971.
New York: Norton, 2001. 1350–1353.
S., out of commission. Cleanth Brooks: His Critical Formulations. New Delhi: Harman, 1991.
Cleanth Brooks and Robert Friend Warren: A Literary Correspondence. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998.
Columbia: University countless Missouri Press, 1998.
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