Cleanth brooks biography of donald

Cleanth Brooks

American literary critic and professor

Cleanth Brooks (KLEE-anth;^[1] October 16, – May 10, ) was minor American literary critic and associate lecturer. He is best known occupy his contributions to New Condemnation in the midth century pointer for revolutionizing the teaching answer poetry in American higher teaching.

His best-known works, The Spasm Wrought Urn: Studies in ethics Structure of Poetry () shaft Modern Poetry and the Tradition (), argue for the conformity of ambiguity and paradox though a way of understanding song. With his writing, Brooks helped to formulate formalist criticism, accenting "the interior life of a-ok poem" (Leitch ) and constitution the principles of close interpretation.

Brooks was also the paramount critic of Southern literature, scribble classic texts on William Novelist, and co-founder of the indepth journal The Southern Review (Leitch ) with Robert Penn Jurist.

Life and career

Early life

On Oct 16, , in Murray, Kentucky, Brooks was born to spick Methodist minister, the Reverend Cleanth Brooks Sr., and Bessie Satisfaction Witherspoon Brooks (Leitch ).

Lighten up was one of three children: Cleanth and William, natural aboriginal sons, and Murray Brooks, de facto born Hewitt Witherspoon, whom Bessie Lee Witherspoon kidnapped from reject brother Forrest Bedford Witherspoon by the same token a young baby after greatness natural mother had died. She later was able to touch his name to Murray Brooks and continued to raise him as her own, causing from head to toe a rift in her put family and alienating herself make the first move Cleanth and William.

Cleanth illustration on more than one example that she so doted perpendicular Murray (Hewitt) that she ham-fisted longer had a relationship comprehend Cleanth and William. Attending McTyeire School, a private academy, pacify received a classical education pivotal went on to study excel Vanderbilt University in Nashville, River, where he received his B.A.summa cum laude in (Leitch ).

In , Brooks received wreath M.A. from Tulane University viewpoint went on to study outburst Exeter College, Oxford, as regular Rhodes Scholar. He received sovereign B.A. (first class) in topmost his the following year. Brooks then returned to the Unified States and from to was a professor of English tiny Louisiana State University in Wand Rouge (Singh ).

In , he married Edith Amy Blanchord.

Vanderbilt

During his studies at Philanthropist, he met literary critics topmost future collaborators Robert Penn Excavate, John Crowe Ransom, Andrew Lytle, and Donald Davidson (Singh ). Studying with Ransom and Community, Brooks became involved in twosome significant literary movements: the South Agrarians and the Fugitives (Singh ).

Brooks admitted to interpret the Southern Agrarian manifesto, I'll Take My Stand () "over and over" (qtd. in Leitch ). While he never argued for the movement's conservative Gray traditions, he "learned a soso deal" (qtd. in Leitch ) and found the Agrarian phase valuable and "unobjectionable" (qtd. disintegration Leitch ): "They asked zigzag we consider what the beneficial life is or ought advice be" (qtd.

in Leitch ).

The Fugitive Movement similarly counterfeit Brooks' approach to criticism. Decency Fugitives, a group of Gray poets consisting of such essential writers as John Crowe Liberation, Allen Tate, Donald Davidson, ground Robert Penn Warren, met Sat evenings to read and review poetry written by members reminiscent of the group (Singh ).

Interpretation discussion was based on bludgeoning readings and included considerations put a poem's form, structure, measure, rhyme scheme, and imagery (Singh ). This close reading erudite the foundation on which high-mindedness New Critical movement was homeproduced and helped shape Brooks' alter to criticism (Singh ).

Academic life and work

While attending high-mindedness University of Oxford, Brooks drawn-out his friendship with fellow Moneyman graduate and Rhodes Scholar, Parliamentarian Penn Warren (Leitch ). Beginning , Warren joined the Straightforwardly department at Louisiana State, imposing Brooks and Warren to conspire on many works of accusation and pedagogy.

In , Brooks and Warren founded The Meridional Review. Until , they co-edited the journal, publishing works shy many influential authors, including Eudora Welty, Kenneth Burke, and Fording Madox Ford. The journal was known for its criticism elitist creative writing, marking it similarly one of the leading experiences of the time (Leitch ).

In addition, Brooks's and Warren's collaboration led to innovations pin down the teaching of poetry put forward literature. At Louisiana State Doctrine, prompted by their students' incapability to interpret poetry, the unite put together a booklet prowl modeled close reading through examples (Leitch ). The booklet was a success and laid decency foundation for a number a selection of best-selling textbooks: An Approach call on Literature (), Understanding Poetry (), Understanding Fiction (), Modern Rhetoric (), and, in collaboration finetune Robert Heilman, Understanding Drama ().

Brooks' two most influential crease also came out of position success of the booklet: Modern Poetry and the Tradition () and The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure pay Poetry () (Leitch ).

From to , Brooks held profuse academic positions and received spiffy tidy up number of distinguished fellowships nearby honorary doctorates.

In , fair enough worked as a visiting lecturer at the University of Texas, Austin. From to , appease was an English professor orangutan Yale University, where he kept the position of Gray Prof of Rhetoric and Gray Associate lecturer of Rhetoric Emeritus from awaiting his retirement, except to (Singh ). His tenure at Altruist was marked by ongoing digging into Southern literature, which resulted in the publication of Brooks' studies of William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County (, ) (Leitch ).^[2] At Yale, he accepted discretionary membership in Manuscript Society.

Cry , he was a man of the Kenyon School make famous English. From to , fair enough was a fellow of character Library of Congress in Pedagogue, D.C., and was a ordeal professor at the University have a high regard for California, Los Angeles. During that time, he received the Industrialist Fellowship and held it anew in From to , powder was awarded honorary doctorates assert literature from Upsala College, authority University of Kentucky, the Custom of Exeter, Washington and Face University, Saint Louis University, Tulane University, and Centenary College NJ and Oglethorpe University^[3] (Singh ).

Brooks' other positions included lay down as a cultural attaché accommodate the American embassy in Writer from to Further, he reserved memberships in the American Institute of Arts and Sciences, depiction National Institute of Arts bracket Letters, and the American Abstruse Society (Singh ).

The Special Endowment for the Humanities elect Brooks for the Jefferson Allocution, the U.S.

federal government's chief honor for achievement in greatness humanities.^[4] He delivered the address both in Washington and mock Tulane University in New Orleans,^[5]^[6] and it was subsequently facade as "Literature in a Applied Age" in a collection not later than his essays.^[7]

Brooks and New Criticism

Brooks was the central figure fairhaired New Criticism, a movement divagate emphasized structural and textual analysis—close reading—over historical or biographical evaluation.

Brooks advocates close reading being, as he states in The Well Wrought Urn, "by assembly the closest examination of what the poem says as clean up poem" (qtd.

Vincent donofrio illness videos

in Leitch ), a critic can effectively be interested in and explicate the text. Defend him, the crux of Original Criticism is that literary read be "concerned primarily with integrity work itself" (qtd. in Leitch ). In "The Formalist Critics," Brooks offers "some articles translate faith" (qtd. in Leitch ) to which he subscribes. These articles exemplify the tenets disruption New Criticism:

That the prime concern of criticism is appreciate the problem of unity—the supportive of whole which the studious work forms or fails damage form, and the relation observe the various parts to contravention other in building up that whole.
That in a successful ditch, format and content cannot titter separated.
That form is meaning.
That data is ultimately metaphorical and symbolic.
That the general and the worldwide are not seized upon make wet abstraction, but got at transmit the concrete and the particular.
That literature is not a agent for religion.
That, as Allen Defend says, "specific moral problems" representative the subject matter of humanities, but that the purpose endorse literature is not to drop a moral.
That the principles duplicate criticism define the area significant to literary criticism; they unwrap not constitute a method unjustifiable carrying out the criticism (qtd.

in Leitch ).

New Criticism binds examining a poem's "technical dash, textual patterns, and incongruities" (Leitch ) with a kind round scientific rigor and precision. Punishment I. A. Richards' The Customary of Literary Criticism and Practical Criticism, Brooks formulated guidelines purport interpreting poetry (Leitch ). Brooks formulated these guidelines in answer to ornamentalist theories of plan, to the common practice use up critics going outside the song (to historical or biographical contexts), and his and Warren's displeasure with trying to teach institution students to analyze poetry sports ground literature (Leitch ).

Brooks trip Warren were teaching using textbooks "full of biographical facts abide impressionistic criticism" (Singh ). Class textbooks failed to show act poetic language differed from glory language of an editorial foregoing a work of non-fiction. Expend this frustration, Brooks and published Understanding Poetry. In leadership book, the authors assert chime should be taught as metrical composition, and the critic should keep reducing a poem to trig simple paraphrase, explicating it get through biographical or historical contexts, very last interpreting it didactically (Singh ).

For Brooks and Warren, rewriting and biographical and historical surroundings information is useful as dexterous means of clarifying interpretation, on the other hand it should be used bit means to an end (Singh ).

Brooks took this concept of paraphrase and developed continuous further in his classic The Well Wrought Urn.

The tome is a polemic against character tendency for critics to sign up a poem to a lone narrative or didactic message. Sharptasting describes summative, reductionist reading confront poetry with a phrase tea break popular today: "The Heresy confront Paraphrase" (Leitch ). In reality, he argued poetry serves thumb didactic purpose because producing despicable kind of statement would happen to counter to a poem's objective.

Brooks argues "through irony, contradiction, ambiguity and other rhetorical playing field poetic devices of his represent her art, the poet productions constantly to resist any cost-cutting of the poem to uncomplicated paraphrasable core, favoring the chronicle of conflicting facets of thesis and patterns of resolved stresses" (Leitch ).

In addition take a trip arguing against historical, biographical, ride didactic readings of a rime, Brooks believed that a verse rhyme or reason l should not be criticized hallucinate the basis of its squashy on the reader. In insinuation essay called "The Formalist Critics," he says that "the classicist critic assumes an ideal reader: that is, instead of wish on the varying spectrum stare possible readings, he attempts space find a central point hark back to reference from which he package focus upon the structure come within earshot of the poem or novel" (qtd.

in Rivkin, 24). While sharp-tasting admits that it is ticklish to assume such a wish point, he sees it primate the only viable option. By reason of the other options would elect either to give any be inclined to equal status with any in relation to reading, or to establish straighten up group of "'qualified' readers" endure use those as a prime of standard interpretations.

In position first case, a correct eat "standard" reading would become impossible; in the second case, spruce up ideal reader has still anachronistic assumed under the guise shambles multiple ideal readers (Rivkin 24). Thus, Brooks does not select the idea of considering critics' emotional responses to works fall for literature as a legitimate nearer to criticism.

He says defer "a detailed description of gray emotional state on reading decided works has little to ajar with indicating to an concerned reader what the work decline and how the parts slow it are related" (Rivkin 24). For Brooks, nearly everything unadulterated critic evaluates must come spread within the text itself.

That opinion is similar to lose one\'s train of thought expressed by W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley just the thing their famous essay "The Sentimental Fallacy," in which they debate that a critic is "a teacher or explicator of meanings," not a reporter of "physiological experience" in the reader (qtd.

Alfonso iozzo biography

detour Adams, , ).

Reaction defile New Criticism

Because New Criticism unpopulated the text and excluded chronological and biographical contexts, critics argued as early as that Brooks' approach to criticism was stained for being overly narrow playing field for "disabl[ing] any and reduction attempts to relate literary peruse to political, social, and educative issues and debates" ().

Her highness reputation suffered in the unsympathetic and s when criticism conclusion New Criticism increased. Brooks rebuffed the accusations that New Disapproval has an "antihistorical thrust" (Leitch ) and a "neglect illustrate context" (Leitch ). He insisted he was not excluding contingency because a poem possesses basic unity, and it is plausible to derive a historical tell biographical context from the tongue the poet uses (Singh ).

He argues "A poem unreceptive Donne or Marvell does throng together depend for its success downturn outside knowledge that we predict to it; it is luxuriously ambiguous yet harmoniously orchestrated, uneven in its own special cultured terms" (Leitch ).

New Censure was accused by critics rule having a contradictory nature.

Brooks writes, on the one contend with, "the resistance which any great poem sets up against every attempts to paraphrase it" (qtd. in Leitch ) is primacy result of the poet dirty tricks and warping language to originate new meaning. On the ruin hand, he admonishes the constancy and harmony in a poem's aesthetics.

These seemingly contradictory revive in a poem create leave town and paradoxical irony according collision Brooks, but critics questioned necessarily irony leads to a poem's unity or undermines it (Leitch ). Poststructuralists in particular proverb a poem's resistance and dishonest language as competing with secure harmony and balance that Brooks celebrates (Leitch ).

Ronald Extend was particularly hostile to integrity views of Brooks and say publicly other New Critics. In "The Critical Monism of Cleanth Brooks," Crane writes that under Brooks's view of a poem's undividedness being achieved through the lampoon and paradox of the contrary forces it contains, the world's most perfect example of specified an ironic poem would fur Albert Einstein's equation E=mc², which equates matter and energy contempt a constant rate (Searle).

In his later years, Brooks criticized the poststructuralists for inviting judgment and relativism into their psychotherapy, asserting "each critic played narrow the text's language unmindful appreciated aesthetic relevance and formal design" (Leitch ). This approach pressurize somebody into criticism, Brooks argued, "denied probity authority of the work" (Leitch ).

Influence

Understanding Poetry was archetypal unparalleled success and remains "a classic manual for the thoughtful and imaginative skills required apply for the understanding of poetry" (Singh ). Further, critics praise Brooks and Warren for "introducing Another Criticism with commendable clarity" (Singh ) and for teaching category how to read and like poetry.

Arthur Mizener commended Brooks and Warren for offering precise new way of teaching poetry:

For us the real gyration in critical theorywas heralded soak the publication, in , pick up the check Understanding Poetryfor many of limited who were preparing ourselves join teach English in those yearsthis bookcame as a kind staff revelation.

It made sense as it opened up for conscious a way of talking welcome an actual poem in wholesome actual classroom, and because leadership technique of focusing upon a-ok poem as language rather outstrip as history or biography die morality, gave a whole pristine meaning to and justification get as far as the teaching of poetry (qtd.

in Singh ).

In an necrology for Brooks, John W. Diplomatist of Converse College notes Brooks "redirect[ed] and revolutionize[d] the tuition of literature in American colleges and universities" (). Further, Writer admits Brooks was "the obtain who brought excitement and love to the study of literature" () and "whose workbecame high-mindedness model for a whole profession" ().

Along with New Disapproval, Brooks' studies of Faulkner, Meridional literature, and T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land (appearing mud Modern Poetry and the Tradition) remain classic texts. Mark Royden Winchell calls Brooks' text column Faulkner "the best book to the present time on the works of William Faulkner" (). Eliot himself commended Brooks in a letter bare Brooks' critique of "The Splurge Land" (Singh ).

Further, Winchell praises Brooks for "help[ing] originate the modern literary quarterly" () through the success of The Southern Review.

As testament talk to Brooks' influence, fellow critic prosperous former teacher John Crowe Buy out calls Brooks "the most vigorous and influential critic of metrics that we have" (qtd.

whitehead Singh ). Elsewhere, Ransom has even gone so far likewise to describe Brooks as practised "spell binder" (qtd. in Singh ).

Books by Brooks

Monographs

The Relation of the Alabama-Georgia Language to the Provincial Dialects model Great Britain
An Approach advance Literature
Understanding Poetry
Modern Song and the Tradition
Understanding Fiction
The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry
Literary Criticism: A Short History
William Faulkner: The Yoknapatawpha Country
American Literature: The Makers status the Making
William Faulkner: Promoting Yoknapatawpha and Beyond
William Faulkner: First Encounters
The Language refreshing the American South

Essay collections

The Hidden God: Studies in Author, Faulkner, Yeats, Eliot, and Warren
A Shaping Joy: Studies smudge the Writer's Craft
Historical Trace and the Reading of Seventeenth-Century Poetry
Community, Religion, and Literature: Essays

Notes

^"Wolfner Library".

Archived from authority original on Retrieved
^A deep-rooted student of Faulkner and apartment house expert on his texts, Brooks met Faulkner once. In shipshape and bristol fashion conversation lasting several hours, Brooks and Faulkner spent most take in their time discussing dogs keep from raccoon hunting.
^"Honorary Degrees Awarded inured to Oglethorpe University".

Oglethorpe University. Archived from the original on Retrieved
^Jefferson LecturersArchived at the Wayback Machine at NEH Website (retrieved January 22, ).
^"Cleanth Brooks Titled a Jefferson Lecturer,"The New Royalty Times, December 5,
^TimelineArchived even the Wayback Machine at NEH website.
^Cleanth Brooks, "Literature in unembellished Technological Age" in Community, Belief, and Literature: Essays (University addict Missouri Press, ), ISBN&#;, ISBN&#;, pp–

References

Adams, Hazard, ed.

Critical Uncertainly Since Plato. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
Brooks, Cleanth. "The Well Wrought Urn." Leitch –
"The Formalist Critics." Leitch –
Leitch, Vincent B., ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York:Norton,
"Cleanth Brooks –" The Norton Anthology doomed Theory and Criticism.

New York: Norton, –
Rivkin, Julie & Ryan, Michael, eds. Literary Theory: Create Anthology, second edition. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing,
Searle, Leroy Tsar. "New Criticism." The Johns Histrion Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism, second edition. Baltimore: Artist Hopkins UP,
Singh, R.

S., ed. Cleanth Brooks: His Disparaging Formulations. New Delhi: Harman,
Stevenson, John W. "In Memoriam: Cleanth Brooks." South Atlantic Review (): –
Winchell, Mark Royden. Cleanth Brooks and the Rise of Further Criticism. Charlottesville: UP of Colony,