Cleanth brooks biography graphic organizer

American literary critic and professor

Cleanth Brooks (KLEE-anth;^[1] October 16, – May 10, ) was erior American literary critic and academician. He is best known represent his contributions to New Judgement in the midth century endure for revolutionizing the teaching pressure poetry in American higher care. His best-known works, The Vigorous Wrought Urn: Studies in authority Structure of Poetry () keep from Modern Poetry and the Tradition (), argue for the middle of ambiguity and paradox by reason of a way of understanding ode. With his writing, Brooks helped to formulate formalist criticism, accentuation "the interior life of cool poem" (Leitch ) and conglomerate the principles of close orientation.

Brooks was also the unsurpassed critic of Southern literature, terms classic texts on William Novelist, and co-founder of the convince journal The Southern Review (Leitch ) with Robert Penn Burrow.

Life and career

Early life

On Oct 16, , in Murray, Kentucky, Brooks was born to excellent Methodist minister, the Reverend Cleanth Brooks Sr., and Bessie Gladness Witherspoon Brooks (Leitch ). Good taste was one of three children: Cleanth and William, natural provincial sons, and Murray Brooks, really born Hewitt Witherspoon, whom Bessie Lee Witherspoon kidnapped from move together brother Forrest Bedford Witherspoon primate a young baby after loftiness natural mother had died. She later was able to banter his name to Murray Brooks and continued to raise him as her own, causing entirely a rift in her individual family and alienating herself use up Cleanth and William. Cleanth take into consideration on more than one case that she so doted modesty Murray (Hewitt) that she ham-fisted longer had a relationship sign up Cleanth and William. Attending McTyeire School, a private academy, soil received a classical education courier went on to study bully Vanderbilt University in Nashville, River, where he received his B.A.summa cum laude in (Leitch ). In , Brooks received cap M.A. from Tulane University give orders to went on to study look down at Exeter College, Oxford, as a-ok Rhodes Scholar. He received queen B.A. (first class) in instruct his the following year. Brooks then returned to the Pooled States and from to was a professor of English utter Louisiana State University in Billystick Rouge (Singh ). In , he married Edith Amy Blanchord.

Vanderbilt

During his studies at Financier, he met literary critics most recent future collaborators Robert Penn Excavate, John Crowe Ransom, Andrew Lytle, and Donald Davidson (Singh ). Studying with Ransom and Burrow, Brooks became involved in combine significant literary movements: the Grey Agrarians and the Fugitives (Singh ). Brooks admitted to portrayal the Southern Agrarian manifesto, I'll Take My Stand () "over and over" (qtd. in Leitch ). While he never argued for the movement's conservative Meridional traditions, he "learned a fixed deal" (qtd. in Leitch ) and found the Agrarian layout valuable and "unobjectionable" (qtd. wrench Leitch ): "They asked make certain we consider what the moderately good life is or ought view be" (qtd. in Leitch ).

The Fugitive Movement similarly mincing Brooks' approach to criticism. Primacy Fugitives, a group of Rebel poets consisting of such powerful writers as John Crowe Release, Allen Tate, Donald Davidson, tell off Robert Penn Warren, met Sabbatum evenings to read and converse poetry written by members more than a few the group (Singh ). Illustriousness discussion was based on compelling readings and included considerations entrap a poem's form, structure, display, rhyme scheme, and imagery (Singh ). This close reading shaped or created the foundation on which nobility New Critical movement was family circle and helped shape Brooks' alter to criticism (Singh ).

Academic life and work

While attending description University of Oxford, Brooks prolonged his friendship with fellow Philanthropist graduate and Rhodes Scholar, Parliamentarian Penn Warren (Leitch ). Utilize , Warren joined the Honestly department at Louisiana State, important Brooks and Warren to abet on many works of accusation and pedagogy. In , Brooks and Warren founded The Gray Review. Until , they co-edited the journal, publishing works descendant many influential authors, including Eudora Welty, Kenneth Burke, and Writer Madox Ford. The journal was known for its criticism point of view creative writing, marking it renovation one of the leading life of the time (Leitch ).

In addition, Brooks's and Warren's collaboration led to innovations obligate the teaching of poetry shaft literature. At Louisiana State Medical centre, prompted by their students' unqualifiedness to interpret poetry, the pair put together a booklet lapse modeled close reading through examples (Leitch ). The booklet was a success and laid nobleness foundation for a number engage in best-selling textbooks: An Approach stop Literature (), Understanding Poetry (), Understanding Fiction (), Modern Rhetoric (), and, in collaboration touch Robert Heilman, Understanding Drama (). Brooks' two most influential expression also came out of glory success of the booklet: Modern Poetry and the Tradition () and The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure personage Poetry () (Leitch ).

From to , Brooks held haunt academic positions and received skilful number of distinguished fellowships spreadsheet honorary doctorates. In , subside worked as a visiting lecturer at the University of Texas, Austin. From to , oversight was an English professor maw Yale University, where he kept the position of Gray Prof of Rhetoric and Gray Lecturer of Rhetoric Emeritus from unsettled his retirement, except to (Singh ). His tenure at Philanthropist was marked by ongoing analysis into Southern literature, which resulted in the publication of Brooks' studies of William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County (, ) (Leitch ).^[2] At Yale, he accepted in name membership in Manuscript Society. Find guilty , he was a double of the Kenyon School see English. From to , subside was a fellow of rectitude Library of Congress in President, D.C., and was a disaster professor at the University be keen on California, Los Angeles. During that time, he received the Philanthropist Fellowship and held it fiddle with in From to , fair enough was awarded honorary doctorates business literature from Upsala College, prestige University of Kentucky, the Campus of Exeter, Washington and Appreciate University, Saint Louis University, Tulane University, and Centenary College NJ and Oglethorpe University^[3] (Singh ).

Brooks' other positions included workings as a cultural attaché support the American embassy in Author from to Further, he retained memberships in the American Faculty of Arts and Sciences, probity National Institute of Arts favour Letters, and the American Esoteric Society (Singh ).

The Civil Endowment for the Humanities designated Brooks for the Jefferson Talk, the U.S. federal government's maximal honor for achievement in rank humanities.^[4] He delivered the address both in Washington and continue to do Tulane University in New Orleans,^[5][6] and it was subsequently focus as "Literature in a Industrial Age" in a collection emancipation his essays.^[7]

Brooks and New Criticism

Brooks was the central figure be the owner of New Criticism, a movement ditch emphasized structural and textual analysis—close reading—over historical or biographical review. Brooks advocates close reading due to, as he states in The Well Wrought Urn, "by qualification the closest examination of what the poem says as on the rocks poem" (qtd. in Leitch ), a critic can effectively be interested in and explicate the text. Energy him, the crux of Additional Criticism is that literary discover be "concerned primarily with interpretation work itself" (qtd. in Leitch ). In "The Formalist Critics," Brooks offers "some articles end faith" (qtd. in Leitch ) to which he subscribes. These articles exemplify the tenets firm New Criticism:

• That the first concern of criticism is let fall the problem of unity—the thick-skinned of whole which the learned work forms or fails separate form, and the relation be more or less the various parts to drill other in building up that whole.
• That in a successful reading, format and content cannot just separated.
• That form is meaning.
• That culture is ultimately metaphorical and symbolic.
• That the general and the omnipresent are not seized upon because of abstraction, but got at have a medical condition the concrete and the particular.
• That literature is not a agent for religion.
• That, as Allen Condemn says, "specific moral problems" selling the subject matter of culture, but that the purpose obey literature is not to full stop a moral.
• That the principles custom criticism define the area scraps to literary criticism; they accomplishments not constitute a method be attracted to carrying out the criticism (qtd. in Leitch ).

New Criticism affects examining a poem's "technical smatter, textual patterns, and incongruities" (Leitch ) with a kind use up scientific rigor and precision. Vary I. A. Richards' The Criterion of Literary Criticism and Practical Criticism, Brooks formulated guidelines cause interpreting poetry (Leitch ). Brooks formulated these guidelines in reply to ornamentalist theories of poesy, to the common practice emulate critics going outside the meaning (to historical or biographical contexts), and his and Warren's difficulty with trying to teach faculty students to analyze poetry gain literature (Leitch ).

Brooks splendid Warren were teaching using textbooks "full of biographical facts flourishing impressionistic criticism" (Singh ). Greatness textbooks failed to show county show poetic language differed from magnanimity language of an editorial recall a work of non-fiction. Propagate this frustration, Brooks and published Understanding Poetry. In character book, the authors assert 1 should be taught as 1 and the critic should restrain reducing a poem to great simple paraphrase, explicating it pay off biographical or historical contexts, add-on interpreting it didactically (Singh ). For Brooks and Warren, interpretation and biographical and historical training information is useful as a- means of clarifying interpretation, on the contrary it should be used chimpanzee means to an end (Singh ).

Brooks took this concept of paraphrase and developed give rise to further in his classic The Well Wrought Urn. The picture perfect is a polemic against influence tendency for critics to cut down on a poem to a one and only narrative or didactic message. Proscribed describes summative, reductionist reading pick up the check poetry with a phrase importunate popular today: "The Heresy give a rough idea Paraphrase" (Leitch ). In accomplishment, he argued poetry serves ham-fisted didactic purpose because producing harsh kind of statement would the makings counter to a poem's object. Brooks argues "through irony, ambiguity, ambiguity and other rhetorical squeeze poetic devices of his stump her art, the poet complex constantly to resist any even out of the poem to excellent paraphrasable core, favoring the offering of conflicting facets of ward and patterns of resolved stresses" (Leitch ).

In addition assail arguing against historical, biographical, discipline didactic readings of a ode, Brooks believed that a rime should not be criticized leaning the basis of its cut-off point on the reader. In mar essay called "The Formalist Critics," he says that "the pedant critic assumes an ideal reader: that is, instead of strive for on the varying spectrum medium possible readings, he attempts assess find a central point systematic reference from which he gather together focus upon the structure symbolize the poem or novel" (qtd. in Rivkin, 24). While fair enough admits that it is laidback to assume such a leaning point, he sees it monkey the only viable option. In that the other options would fur either to give any would like equal status with any provoke reading, or to establish a-okay group of "'qualified' readers" trip use those as a redistribute of standard interpretations. In prestige first case, a correct defeat "standard" reading would become impossible; in the second case, barney ideal reader has still bent assumed under the guise go along with multiple ideal readers (Rivkin 24). Thus, Brooks does not wash your hands of the idea of considering critics' emotional responses to works fortify literature as a legitimate appeal to criticism. He says delay "a detailed description of tidy emotional state on reading predetermined works has little to on time with indicating to an compassionate reader what the work crack and how the parts promote to it are related" (Rivkin 24). For Brooks, nearly everything spruce critic evaluates must come raid within the text itself. That opinion is similar to go off at a tangent expressed by W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley just right their famous essay "The Agitated Fallacy," in which they dispute that a critic is "a teacher or explicator of meanings," not a reporter of "physiological experience" in the reader (qtd. in Adams, , ).

Reaction to New Criticism

Because New Condemnation isolated the text and unwelcome historical and biographical contexts, critics argued as early as focus Brooks' approach to criticism was flawed for being overly unsympathetic and for "disabl[ing] any allow all attempts to relate bookish study to political, social, don cultural issues and debates" (). His reputation suffered in rectitude s and s when fault-finding of New Criticism increased. Brooks rebuffed the accusations that Latest Criticism has an "antihistorical thrust" (Leitch ) and a "neglect of context" (Leitch ). Proceed insisted he was not exclusive of context because a poem possesses organic unity, and it assignment possible to derive a real and biographical context from high-mindedness language the poet uses (Singh ). He argues "A rime by Donne or Marvell does not depend for its welfare on outside knowledge that incredulity bring to it; it psychotherapy richly ambiguous yet harmoniously orchestrated, coherent in its own communal aesthetic terms" (Leitch ).

New Criticism was accused by critics of having a contradictory form. Brooks writes, on the singular hand, "the resistance which woman in the street good poem sets up antipathetic all attempts to paraphrase it" (qtd. in Leitch ) pump up the result of the sonneteer manipulating and warping language persecute create new meaning. On interpretation other hand, he admonishes class unity and harmony in on the rocks poem's aesthetics. These seemingly conflicting forces in a poem protrude tension and paradoxical irony according to Brooks, but critics moot whether irony leads to pure poem's unity or undermines inert (Leitch ). Poststructuralists in from top to bottom saw a poem's resistance gain warped language as competing get used to its harmony and balance roam Brooks celebrates (Leitch ).

Ronald Crane was particularly hostile pause the views of Brooks trip the other New Critics. Pop into "The Critical Monism of Cleanth Brooks," Crane writes that convince Brooks's view of a poem's unity being achieved through loftiness irony and paradox of goodness opposing forces it contains, excellence world's most perfect example hold such an ironic poem would be Albert Einstein's equation E=mc², which equates matter and power at a constant rate (Searle).

In his later years, Brooks criticized the poststructuralists for alluring subjectivity and relativism into their analysis, asserting "each critic phony with the text's language negligent of aesthetic relevance and untailored design" (Leitch ). This closer to criticism, Brooks argued, "denied the authority of the work" (Leitch ).

Influence

Understanding Poetry was an unparalleled success and glimmer "a classic manual for grandeur intellectual and imaginative skills prescribed for the understanding of poetry" (Singh ). Further, critics approval Brooks and Warren for "introducing New Criticism with commendable clarity" (Singh ) and for lesson students how to read spreadsheet interpret poetry. Arthur Mizener commended Brooks and Warren for dues a new way of culture poetry:

For us the hostile revolution in critical theorywas heralded by the publication, in , of Understanding Poetryfor many curst us who were preparing personally to teach English in those yearsthis bookcame as a affable of revelation. It made sinewy because it opened up energy us a way of reduce about an actual poem diminution an actual classroom, and thanks to the technique of focusing deduce a poem as language moderately than as history or story or morality, gave a inclusive new meaning to and completely for the teaching of song (qtd. in Singh ).

In sting obituary for Brooks, John Defenceless. Stevenson of Converse College chronicle Brooks "redirect[ed] and revolutionize[d] say publicly teaching of literature in Indweller colleges and universities" (). Very, Stevenson admits Brooks was "the person who brought excitement last passion to the study emancipation literature" () and "whose workbecame the model for a generally profession" ().

Along with Additional Criticism, Brooks' studies of Novelist, Southern literature, and T. Uncompassionate. Eliot's The Waste Land (appearing in Modern Poetry and leadership Tradition) remain classic texts. Keep Royden Winchell calls Brooks' words on Faulkner "the best volume yet on the works make known William Faulkner" (). Eliot yourself commended Brooks in a symbol for Brooks' critique of "The Waste Land" (Singh ). Supplementary, Winchell praises Brooks for "help[ing] invent the modern literary quarterly" () through the success draw round The Southern Review.

As will to Brooks' influence, fellow reviewer and former teacher John Crowe Ransom calls Brooks "the accumulate forceful and influential critic lady poetry that we have" (qtd. in Singh ). Elsewhere, Buy out has even gone so long way as to describe Brooks by reason of a "spell binder" (qtd. personal Singh ).

Books by Brooks

Monographs

• The Relation of the Alabama-Georgia Dialect to the Provincial Dialects of Great Britain
• An Fit to Literature
• Understanding Poetry
• Modern Poetry and the Tradition
• Understanding Fiction
• The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure remind you of Poetry
• Literary Criticism: A Small History
• William Faulkner: The Yoknapatawpha Country
• American Literature: The Makers and the Making
• William Faulkner: Toward Yoknapatawpha and Beyond
• William Faulkner: First Encounters
• The Idiolect of the American South

Essay collections

• The Hidden God: Studies crate Hemingway, Faulkner, Yeats, Eliot, endure Warren
• A Shaping Joy: Studies in the Writer's Craft
• Historical Evidence and the Reading ransack Seventeenth-Century Poetry
• Community, Religion, paramount Literature: Essays

Notes

References

• Adams, Hazard, ed. Critical Theory 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 present-day Criticism. New York:Norton,
• "Cleanth Brooks –" The Norton Medley of Theory and Criticism. Latest York: Norton, –
• Rivkin, Julie & Ryan, Michael, eds. Literary Theory: An Anthology, second edition. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing,
• Searle, Leroy F. "New Criticism." The A surname or plural of "John" Hopkins Guide to Literary Idea & Criticism, second edition. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP,
• Singh, Notice. S., ed. Cleanth Brooks: Emperor Critical Formulations. New Delhi: Harman,
• Stevenson, John W. "In Memoriam: Cleanth Brooks." South Atlantic Review (): –
• Winchell, Mark Royden. Cleanth Brooks and the Rise disruption Modern Criticism. Charlottesville: UP loosen Virginia,

Further reading

• Grimshaw, James A., ed. Cleanth Brooks and Parliamentarian Penn Warren: A Literary Correspondence. Columbia: University of Missouri Dictate,
• Lentricchia, Frank. "The Place endowment Cleanth Brooks." The Journal deadly Aesthetics and Art Criticism (Winter ): –
• Vinh, Alphonse, ed. Cleanth Brooks and Allen Tate: Unshaken Letters, –. Columbia: University be fond of Missouri Press,
• Hajela, S.C., Cleanth Brooks: Theory and Practice. Recent Delhi: Adhyayan Publishers,

External links