CLEANTH BROOKS THE FORMALIST CRITICS PDF
Cleanth Brooks was an American literary critic and professor. . In “The Formalist Critics,” Brooks offers “some articles of faith” (qtd. in Leitch ) to which he subscribes. These articles. “The Formalist Critics.” by Cleanth Brooks. Here are some articles of faith I could subscribe to: That literary criticism is a description and an evaluation of its object . Here1 are some articles of faith I could subscribe to: That literary criticism is a description and an evaluation of its object. That the primary concern of criticism is .
| Author: | Zuluhn Shaktibar |
| Country: | Reunion |
| Language: | English (Spanish) |
| Genre: | Life |
| Published (Last): | 23 February 2006 |
| Pages: | 261 |
| PDF File Size: | 9.48 Mb |
| ePub File Size: | 13.76 Mb |
| ISBN: | 716-5-62371-643-8 |
| Downloads: | 19489 |
| Price: | Free* [*Free Regsitration Required] |
| Uploader: | Kigul |
Views Read Edit View history. In his later years, Brooks criticized the poststructuralists for inviting subjectivity and relativism into their analysis, asserting “each critic played with the text’s language unmindful of aesthetic relevance and formal design” Leitch His best-known works, The Well Wrought Urn: Brooks formulated these guidelines in reaction to ornamentalist theories of poetry, to the common practice of critics going outside the poem to historical or biographical contextsand his and Warren’s frustration with trying to teach college students to analyze poetry and literature Leitch He says that “a detailed description of my emotional state on reading certain works has little to do with indicating to an interested reader what the work is and how the parts of it are related” Rivkin The discussion was based on intensive readings and included considerations of a poem’s form, structure, meter, rhyme scheme, and imagery Singh Brooks advocates close reading because, as he states in The Well Wrought Urn”by making the closest examination of what the poem says as a poem” qtd.
Cleanth Brooks – Wikipedia
Arthur Mizener commended Brooks and Warren for offering a new way of teaching poetry:. Cleanth and William, natural born sons, and Murray Brooks, actually born Hewitt Witherspoon, whom Bessie Lee Witherspoon kidnapped from her brother Forrest Bedford Witherspoon as a young baby after the natural mother had died.
He is best known for his contributions to New Criticism in the midth century and for revolutionizing the teaching of poetry in American higher education. InWarren joined the English department at Louisiana State, leading Brooks and Warren to collaborate on many works of criticism and pedagogy.
Further, Stevenson admits Brooks was “the person who brought excitement and passion to the study of literature” and “whose work The journal was known for its criticism and creative writing, marking it as one of the leading journals of the time Leitch For Brooks, nearly everything a critic evaluates must come from within the text itself.
Murray, KentuckyU.
This page was last edited on 8 Novemberat The booklet was a success and laid the foundation for a number of best-selling textbooks: It made sense because it opened up for us a way of talking about an actual poem in an actual classroom, and because the technique of focusing upon a poem as language rather than as history or biography or morality, gave a whole new meaning to and justification for the teaching of poetry qtd.
She later was able to change his name to Murray Brooks and continued to raise him as her own, causing quite a rift in her own family and alienating herself from Cleanth and William.
At Louisiana State Universityprompted by their students’ inability to interpret poetry, the two put together a booklet that modeled close reading through examples Leitch Studies in the Structure of Poetry and Modern Poetry and the Traditionargue for the centrality of ambiguity and paradox as a cleantu of understanding poetry.
In a conversation lasting several hours, Brooks and Faulkner spent most of their time discussing dogs and coon hunting. Elsewhere, Ransom has even gone so far as to clewnth Brooks as a “spell binder” qtd.
The Fugitive Movement similarly influenced Brooks’ approach to criticism.
Cleanth Brooks
October 16, Murray, KentuckyU. Since the other options would be either to give any reading equal status with any other reading, or to establish a group of “‘qualified’ readers” and use those as a range of standard interpretations.
The book is a polemic against the tendency for critics to reduce a poem to a single narrative or didactic message. In “The Formalist Brolks Brooks offers “some articles of faith” qtd. Brooks was also the preeminent critic of Southern literaturewriting classic texts on William Faulknerand co-founder of the influential journal The Southern Review Leitch with Robert Penn Warren.
Brooks rebuffed the accusations that New Criticism has an “antihistorical thrust” Leitch and a “neglect of context” Leitch Understanding Poetry was an unparalleled success and remains “a classic manual for the intellectual and imaginative skills required for the understanding of poetry” Singh His reputation suffered in the s and s when criticism of New Criticism increased.
In the book, the authors assert poetry should be taught as poetry, and the critic should resist reducing formlaist poem to a simple paraphrase, explicating it through biographical or historical contexts, and interpreting it didactically Singh Brooks writes, on the one hand, “the tbe which any good poem sets up against all attempts to paraphrase it” qtd.
For Formalit and Warren, paraphrase and biographical and historical background information is useful as a means of clarifying interpretation, but it should be used as means to an end Singh He insisted he was not excluding context because a poem possesses organic unityand it is possible to derive a historical and biographical context from formalixt language the ccritics uses Singh Further, critics praise Brooks and Warren for “introducing New Criticism with commendable clarity” Singh and for teaching students how to read and interpret poetry.
Attending McTyeire School, a private academy, he received a classical education and went on to study at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennesseewhere he received his B. Beardsley in their famous essay “The Affective Fallacy,” in which they argue that a critic is “a teacher or explicator of meanings,” not a reporter of “physiological experience” in the reader qtd.
He received his B.
He was one of three children: From tohe was a fellow of the Library of Congress in Washington, D. He argues “A poem by Donne or Marvell does not depend for its success on outside knowledge that we bring to it; it is richly ambiguous yet harmoniously orchestrated, coherent in its own special aesthetic terms” Leitch This opinion is similar to that expressed by W. From this frustration, Brooks and Warren published Understanding Poetry. InBrooks received his M.
Stevenson of Converse College notes Brooks “redirect[ed] and revolutionize[d] the teaching of literature in American colleges and universities” Brooks was the central figure of New Criticism, a movement that emphasized structural and textual analysis—close reading—over historical or biographical analysis.
Studying with Ransom and Warren, Brooks became involved in two significant literary movements: In the first case, a correct or “standard” reading would become impossible; in the second case, an ideal reader has still been assumed under the guise of multiple ideal readers Rivkin As testament to Brooks’ influence, fellow critic and former teacher John Crowe Ransom calls Brooks “the most forceful and influential critic of poetry that we have” qtd.
New Criticism involves examining a poem’s “technical elements, textual patterns, and incongruities” Leitch with a kind of scientific rigor and precision. Brooks’ two most influential works also came out of the success of the booklet: Because New Criticism isolated the text and excluded historical and biographical contexts, critics argued as early as that Brooks’ approach to criticism was flawed for being overly narrow and for “disabl[ing] any and all attempts to relate literary study to political, social, and cultural issues and debates”