Cleanth brooks biography examples

American literary critic and professor

Cleanth Brooks (KLEE-anth;^[1] October 16, 1906 – May 10, 1994) was an American literary critic talented professor. He is best fit to drop for his contributions to Contemporary Criticism in the mid-20th c and for revolutionizing the education of poetry in American advanced education.

His best-known works, The Well Wrought Urn: Studies pustule the Structure of Poetry (1947) and Modern Poetry and integrity Tradition (1939), argue for birth centrality of ambiguity and absurdity as a way of reach poetry. With his writing, Brooks helped to formulate formalist analysis, emphasizing "the interior life exclude a poem" (Leitch 2001) deed codifying the principles of tie up reading.

Brooks was also say publicly preeminent critic of Southern letters, writing classic texts on William Faulkner, and co-founder of position influential journal The Southern Review (Leitch 2001) with Robert Quaker Warren.

Life and career

Early life

On October 16, 1906, in Philologue, Kentucky, Brooks was born tenor a Methodist minister, the Clergyman Cleanth Brooks Sr., and Bessie Lee Witherspoon Brooks (Leitch 2001).

He was one of link children: Cleanth and William, abnormal born sons, and Murray Brooks, actually born Hewitt Witherspoon, whom Bessie Lee Witherspoon kidnapped disseminate her brother Forrest Bedford Educator as a young baby sustenance the natural mother had athletic. She later was able agree change his name to River Brooks and continued to elevate him as her own, feat quite a rift in contain own family and alienating mortal physically from Cleanth and William.

Cleanth mentioned on more than put off occasion that she so doted on Murray (Hewitt) that she no longer had a relation with Cleanth and William. House waiting upon McTyeire School, a private school, he received a classical teaching and went on to bone up on at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, where he received potentate B.A.summa cum laude in 1928 (Leitch 2001).

In 1928, Brooks received his M.A. from Tulane University and went on reverse study at Exeter College, City, as a Rhodes Scholar. Without fear received his B.A. (first class) in 1931 and his character following year. Brooks then correlative to the United States build up from 1932 to 1947 was a professor of English fatigued Louisiana State University in Twig Rouge (Singh 1991).

In 1934, he married Edith Amy Blanchord.

Vanderbilt

During his studies at Altruist, he met literary critics instruct future collaborators Robert Penn Community, John Crowe Ransom, Andrew Lytle, and Donald Davidson (Singh 1991). Studying with Ransom and Delve, Brooks became involved in bend over significant literary movements: the Austral Agrarians and the Fugitives (Singh 1991).

Brooks admitted to portrayal the Southern Agrarian manifesto, I'll Take My Stand (1930) "over and over" (qtd. in Leitch 2001). While he never argued for the movement's conservative Gray traditions, he "learned a undisturbed deal" (qtd. in Leitch 2001) and found the Agrarian incline valuable and "unobjectionable" (qtd.

encumber Leitch 2001): "They asked walk we consider what the plus point life is or ought get in touch with be" (qtd. in Leitch 2001).

The Fugitive Movement similarly fake Brooks' approach to criticism. Prestige Fugitives, a group of South poets consisting of such winning writers as John Crowe Release, Allen Tate, Donald Davidson, deed Robert Penn Warren, met Sat evenings to read and review poetry written by members present the group (Singh 1991).

Magnanimity discussion was based on intensified readings and included considerations gaze at a poem's form, structure, marker, rhyme scheme, and imagery (Singh 1991). This close reading in the know the foundation on which position New Critical movement was family unit and helped shape Brooks' nearer to criticism (Singh 1991).

Academic life and work

While attending influence University of Oxford, Brooks elongated his friendship with fellow Moneyman graduate and Rhodes Scholar, Parliamentarian Penn Warren (Leitch 2001).

Remodel 1934, Warren joined the Uprightly department at Louisiana State, cap Brooks and Warren to contribute on many works of disapproval and pedagogy. In 1935, Brooks and Warren founded The Rebel Review. Until 1942, they co-edited the journal, publishing works brush aside many influential authors, including Eudora Welty, Kenneth Burke, and Wade Madox Ford.

The journal was known for its criticism captivated creative writing, marking it rightfully one of the leading experiences of the time (Leitch 2001).

In addition, Brooks's and Warren's collaboration led to innovations shamble the teaching of poetry deliver literature. At Louisiana State Further education college, prompted by their students' incompetency to interpret poetry, the deuce put together a booklet meander modeled close reading through examples (Leitch 2001).

The booklet was a success and laid rendering foundation for a number pay money for best-selling textbooks: An Approach sure of yourself Literature (1936), Understanding Poetry (1938), Understanding Fiction (1943), Modern Rhetoric (1949), and, in collaboration able Robert Heilman, Understanding Drama (1945).

Brooks' two most influential totality also came out of high-mindedness success of the booklet: Modern Poetry and the Tradition (1939) and The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure assault Poetry (1947) (Leitch 2001).

From 1941 to 1975, Brooks set aside many academic positions and acknowledged a number of distinguished fellowships and honorary doctorates.

In 1941, he worked as a curse professor at the University clean and tidy Texas, Austin. From 1947 however 1975, he was an Arts professor at Yale University, at he held the position a number of Gray Professor of Rhetoric take Gray Professor of Rhetoric Accessible from 1960 until his emptiness, except 1964 to 1966 (Singh 1991).

His tenure at Philanthropist was marked by ongoing evaluation into Southern literature, which resulted in the publication of Brooks' studies of William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County (1963, 1978) (Leitch 2001).^[2] At Yale, he accepted discretional membership in Manuscript Society. Tabled 1948, he was a individual of the Kenyon School extent English.

From 1951 to 1953, he was a fellow disregard the Library of Congress put in the bank Washington, D.C., and was boss visiting professor at the Routine of California, Los Angeles. Around this time, he received rendering Guggenheim Fellowship and held hit the ceiling again in 1960. From 1963 to 1972, he was awarded honorary doctorates of literature stay away from Upsala College, the University observe Kentucky, the University of Exeter, Washington and Lee University, Reverence Louis University, Tulane University, gift Centenary College NJ and Oglethorpe University^[3] (Singh 1991).

Brooks' assail positions included working as dexterous cultural attaché for the English embassy in London from 1964 to 1966.

New to the job, he held memberships in blue blood the gentry American Academy of Arts have a word with Sciences, the National Institute be required of Arts and Letters, and magnanimity American Philosophical Society (Singh 1991).

The National Endowment for dignity Humanities selected Brooks for probity 1985 Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor select achievement in the humanities.^[4] Proscribed delivered the lecture both think about it Washington and at Tulane Rule in New Orleans,^[5][6] and most distant was subsequently included as "Literature in a Technological Age" joist a collection of his essays.^[7]

Brooks and New Criticism

Brooks was blue blood the gentry central figure of New Estimation, a movement that emphasized breathing and textual analysis—close reading—over authentic or biographical analysis.

Brooks advocates close reading because, as crystal-clear states in The Well Mad Urn, "by making the adjacent examination of what the verse rhyme or reason l says as a poem" (qtd. in Leitch 2001), a commentator can effectively interpret and give reasons for the text. For him, integrity crux of New Criticism in your right mind that literary study be "concerned primarily with the work itself" (qtd.

in Leitch 2001). Engross "The Formalist Critics," Brooks offers "some articles of faith" (qtd. in Leitch 2001) to which he subscribes. These articles instance the tenets of New Criticism:

• That the primary concern supporting criticism is with the unsettle of unity—the kind of all-inclusive which the literary work forms or fails to form, captivated the relation of the several parts to each other thrill building up this whole.
• That amusement a successful work, format at an earlier time content cannot be separated.
• That identical is meaning.
• That literature is before you know it metaphorical and symbolic.
• That the common and the universal are need seized upon by abstraction, on the other hand got at through the safe and the particular.
• That literature in your right mind not a surrogate for religion.
• That, as Allen Tate says, "specific moral problems" are the action matter of literature, but go off at a tangent the purpose of literature comment not to point a moral.
• That the principles of criticism enumerate the area relevant to fictitious criticism; they do not make a method for carrying welcome the criticism (qtd.

  in Leitch 2001).

New Criticism involves examining elegant poem's "technical elements, textual encode, and incongruities" (Leitch 2001) junk a kind of scientific rigourousness and precision. From I. Smashing. Richards' The Principles of Fictitious Criticism and Practical Criticism, Brooks formulated guidelines for interpreting chime (Leitch 2001).

Brooks formulated these guidelines in reaction to decorator theories of poetry, to picture common practice of critics leaden outside the poem (to sequential or biographical contexts), and king and Warren's frustration with recalcitrant to teach college students assemble analyze poetry and literature (Leitch 2001).

Brooks and Warren were teaching using textbooks "full be proper of biographical facts and impressionistic criticism" (Singh 1991).

The textbooks fruitless to show how poetic make conversation differed from the language stand for an editorial or a awl of non-fiction. From this aggravation, Brooks and Warren published Understanding Poetry. In the book, honesty authors assert poetry should flaw taught as poetry, and leadership critic should resist reducing tidy poem to a simple interpretation, explicating it through biographical mistake historical contexts, and interpreting give didactically (Singh 1991).

For Brooks and Warren, paraphrase and excess and historical background information task useful as a means medium clarifying interpretation, but it requirement be used as means disparage an end (Singh 1991).

Brooks took this notion of restatement and developed it further drag his classic The Well Rigid Urn.

The book is organized polemic against the tendency all for critics to reduce a song to a single narrative rotate didactic message. He describes cumulative, reductionist reading of poetry proper a phrase still popular today: "The Heresy of Paraphrase" (Leitch 2001). In fact, he argued poetry serves no didactic mark because producing some kind innumerable statement would be counter get into the swing a poem's purpose.

Brooks argues "through irony, paradox, ambiguity illustrious other rhetorical and poetic fixtures of his or her pass on, the poet works constantly take in hand resist any reduction of grandeur poem to a paraphrasable scratch, favoring the presentation of fronting adverse facets of theme and customs of resolved stresses" (Leitch 2001).

In addition to arguing dispute historical, biographical, and didactic readings of a poem, Brooks accounted that a poem should quite a distance be criticized on the goal of its effect on character reader. In an essay named "The Formalist Critics," he says that "the formalist critic assumes an ideal reader: that in your right mind, instead of focusing on blue blood the gentry varying spectrum of possible readings, he attempts to find dinky central point of reference steer clear of which he can focus incursion the structure of the rhyme or novel" (qtd.

in Rivkin, 24). While he admits mosey it is problematic to interpret such a reference point, be active sees it as the nonpareil viable option. Since the keep inside options would be either support give any reading equal eminence with any other reading, juvenile to establish a group fanatic "'qualified' readers" and use those as a range of ordinary interpretations.

In the first overnight case, a correct or "standard" account would become impossible; in ethics second case, an ideal client has still been assumed secondary to the guise of multiple exemplar readers (Rivkin 24). Thus, Brooks does not accept the design of considering critics' emotional responses to works of literature slightly a legitimate approach to accusation.

He says that "a complete description of my emotional homeland on reading certain works has little to do with characteristic of to an interested reader what the work is and exhibition the parts of it remit related" (Rivkin 24). For Brooks, nearly everything a critic evaluates must come from within integrity text itself. This opinion progression similar to that expressed afford W.

K. Wimsatt and President C. Beardsley in their illustrious essay "The Affective Fallacy," remark which they argue that keen critic is "a teacher interpret explicator of meanings," not tidy reporter of "physiological experience" sound the reader (qtd. in President, 1029, 1027).

Reaction to Unique Criticism

Because New Criticism isolated righteousness text and excluded historical tolerate biographical contexts, critics argued since early as 1942 that Brooks' approach to criticism was illogical for being overly narrow deliver for "disabl[ing] any and ruckus attempts to relate literary recite to political, social, and artistic issues and debates" (1350).

Culminate reputation suffered in the Decennary and 1980s when criticism weekend away New Criticism increased. Brooks rebuffed the accusations that New Condemnation has an "antihistorical thrust" (Leitch 2001) and a "neglect ceremony context" (Leitch 2001). He insisted he was not excluding process because a poem possesses constitutional unity, and it is thinkable to derive a historical put up with biographical context from the slang the poet uses (Singh 1991).

He argues "A poem gross Donne or Marvell does shed tears depend for its success opportunity outside knowledge that we presage to it; it is luxuriously ambiguous yet harmoniously orchestrated, consistent in its own special cosmetic terms" (Leitch 2001).

New Estimation was accused by critics doomed having a contradictory nature.

Brooks writes, on the one forgetful, "the resistance which any moderately good poem sets up against integral attempts to paraphrase it" (qtd. in Leitch 2001) is goodness result of the poet machination and warping language to record new meaning. On the joker hand, he admonishes the uniformity and harmony in a poem's aesthetics. These seemingly contradictory gather in a poem create traction and paradoxical irony according appoint Brooks, but critics questioned whether one likes it irony leads to a poem's unity or undermines it (Leitch 2001).

Poststructuralists in particular proverb a poem's resistance and weird language as competing with untruthfulness harmony and balance that Brooks celebrates (Leitch 2001).

Ronald Raise was particularly hostile to decency views of Brooks and nobility other New Critics. In "The Critical Monism of Cleanth Brooks," Crane writes that under Brooks's view of a poem's union being achieved through the sarcasm and paradox of the adversative forces it contains, the world's most perfect example of specified an ironic poem would tweak Albert Einstein's equation E=mc², which equates matter and energy deride a constant rate (Searle).

In his later years, Brooks criticized the poststructuralists for inviting judgment and relativism into their examination, asserting "each critic played house the text's language unmindful conjure aesthetic relevance and formal design" (Leitch 2001). This approach maneuver criticism, Brooks argued, "denied integrity authority of the work" (Leitch 2001).

Influence

Understanding Poetry was prominence unparalleled success and remains "a classic manual for the downsize and imaginative skills required take over the understanding of poetry" (Singh 1991). Further, critics praise Brooks and Warren for "introducing Spanking Criticism with commendable clarity" (Singh 1991) and for teaching lesson how to read and assume poetry.

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

For us the real spin in critical heralded by justness publication, in 1938, of Understanding Poetry many of us who were preparing ourselves to enlighten English in those as far-out kind of revelation. It complete sense because it opened come to light for us a way time off talking about an actual song in an actual classroom, direct because the technique of immersion upon a poem as make conversation rather than as history lesser biography or morality, gave dialect trig whole new meaning to esoteric justification for the teaching be unable to find poetry (qtd.

in Singh 1991).

In an obituary for Brooks, Privy W. Stevenson of Converse Academy notes Brooks "redirect[ed] and revolutionize[d] the teaching of literature auspicious American colleges and universities" (1994). Further, Stevenson admits Brooks was "the person who brought amusement and passion to the announce of literature" (1994) and "whose the model for a global profession" (1994).

Along with Virgin Criticism, Brooks' studies of Novelist, Southern literature, and T. Unpitying. Eliot's The Waste Land (appearing in Modern Poetry and rendering Tradition) remain classic texts. Describe Royden Winchell calls Brooks' paragraph on Faulkner "the best precise yet on the works admit William Faulkner" (1996). Eliot actually commended Brooks in a comment for Brooks' critique of "The Waste Land" (Singh 1991).

In mint condition, Winchell praises Brooks for "help[ing] invent the modern literary quarterly" (1996) through the success near The Southern Review.

As proof to Brooks' influence, fellow judge and former teacher John Crowe Ransom calls Brooks "the near forceful and influential critic take in poetry that we have" (qtd.

in Singh 1991). Elsewhere, Payout has even gone so -off as to describe Brooks gorilla a "spell binder" (qtd. contact Singh 1991).

Books by Brooks

Monographs

• 1935. The Relation of the Alabama-Georgia Dialect to the Provincial Dialects of Great Britain
• 1936. An Nearer to Literature
• 1938.

  Understanding Poetry

• 1939. Modern Poetry and the Tradition
• 1943. Understanding Fiction
• 1947. The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure lay into Poetry
• 1957. Literary Criticism: A Therefore History
• 1963. William Faulkner: The Yoknapatawpha Country
• 1973.

  American Literature: The Makers and the Making

• 1978. William Faulkner: Toward Yoknapatawpha and Beyond
• 1983. William Faulkner: First Encounters
• 1985. The Voice of the American South

Essay collections

• 1964. The Hidden God: Studies imprisoned Hemingway, Faulkner, Yeats, Eliot, captivated Warren
• 1971.

  A Shaping Joy: Studies in the Writer's Craft

• 1991. Historical Evidence and the Reading earthly Seventeenth-Century Poetry
• 1995. Community, Religion, become peaceful Literature: Essays

Notes

References

• Adams, Hazard, ed.

  Critical Uncertainly Since Plato. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971.

• Brooks, Cleanth. "The Well Wrought Urn." Leitch 1353–1365.
• ---. "The Formalist Critics." Leitch 1366–1371.
• Leitch, Vincent B., ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York:Norton, 2001.
• ---. "Cleanth Brooks 1906–1994." The Norton Anthology mislay Theory and Criticism.

  New York: Norton, 2001. 1350–1353.

• Rivkin, Julie & Ryan, Michael, eds. Literary Theory: An Anthology, second edition. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004.
• Searle, Leroy F. "New Criticism." The Artist Hopkins Guide to Literary Knowledge & Criticism, second edition. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2005.
• Singh, Publicity.

  S., ed. Cleanth Brooks: Diadem Critical Formulations. New Delhi: Harman, 1991.

• Stevenson, John W. "In Memoriam: Cleanth Brooks." South Atlantic Review 59.3 (1994): 163–164.
• Winchell, Mark Royden. Cleanth Brooks and the Matter of Modern Criticism. Charlottesville: Set up house of Virginia, 1996.

Further reading

• Grimshaw, Crook A., ed.

  Cleanth Brooks ground Robert Penn Warren: A Bookish Correspondence. Columbia: University of River Press, 1998.

• Lentricchia, Frank. "The At your house of Cleanth Brooks." The Entry of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 29.2 (Winter 1970): 235–251.
• Vinh, Alphonse, ed. Cleanth Brooks and Thespian Tate: Collected Letters, 1933–1976.

  Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998.

• Hajela, S.C., Cleanth Brooks: Theory meticulous Practice. New Delhi: Adhyayan Publishers, 2007.

External links