Download or read book Seven Types of Ambiguity written by William Empson and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 1966 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines seven types of ambiguity, providing examples of it in the writings of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and T.S. Eliot.
Download or read book William Empson Volume II written by John Haffenden and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2006-11-02 with total page 836 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William Empson (1906-1984) was the foremost English literary critic of the twentieth century. His public life and travels took him through many of the major events of the modern world. This compelling account is the second of two volumes exploring his remarkable life and work.
Download or read book William Empson Volume I written by John Haffenden and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2005-04-28 with total page 720 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William Empson was the foremost English literary critic of the twentieth century. He was a man of huge energy and curiosity, and a genuine eccentric who remained imperturbable in the face of all the extraordinary circumstances in which he found himself. The discovery of contraceptives in his possession by a bedmaker at Cambridge University led to his being robbed of a promised Fellowship. Yet Seven Types of Ambiguity, drafted while he was still an undergraduate, promptly brought him world-wide fame. Empson invented modern literary criticism in English. He acted too as a cultural fifth-columnist, challenging received doctrine in life and literature. 'It is a very good thing for a poet . . . to be saying something which is considered very shocking at the time,' he maintained. 'To become morally independent of one's formative society . . . is the grandest theme of all literature, because it is the only means of moral progress.' His public life took him through many of the major political events of the modern world — the rise of imperialism in Japan, the Sino-Japanese war in China, wartime propaganda for the BBC, and the Chinese civil war and Communist takeover of Peking in 1949. His friends and critical sparring partners included I. A. Richards, Kathleen Raine, J. B. S. Haldane, Humphrey Jennings, George Orwell, Robert Lowell, Dylan Thomas, Stephen Spender, Helen Gardner, and T. S. Eliot. 'It is of great importance now that writers should try to keep a certain world-mindedness,' he insisted. 'Without the literatures you cannot have a sense of history, and history is like the balancing-pole of the tightrope-walker . . . ; and nowadays we very much need the longer balancing-pole of not national but world history.' His passionate world-mindedness, and his humanism, combativeness, and wit, are fully in evidence in this, the first of two volumes exploring his remarkable life and work.
Download or read book William Empson Volume I written by John Haffenden and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-22 with total page 734 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Haffenden's acclaimed biography of William Empson (1906-1984), the foremost English literary critic of the twentieth century, is now available in paperback. An authoritative and compelling account and the first of two volumes exploring his remarkable life and work.
Download or read book Using Biography written by William Empson and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written in Empson's typically witty and iconoclastic style, Using Biography is a brilliant exploration of writers asdiverse as Marvell, Dryden, Fielding,Yeats, Eliot, and Joyce. The last book hecompleted before his death in 1984, itis his most recent since Milton's God waspublished in 1961. Empson's earlierbooks inspired American New Criticism,but unlike the New Critics Empson hasalways been an intentionalist. UsingBiography is dramatic evidence of hisfiercely held view that biographical material can help us appreciate a writer'smethods and intentions. It demonstratesa shrewd understanding of human relationships as they occur, not always explicitly, in works of literature.
Download or read book William Empson written by Paul H. Fry and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-01-31 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William Empson: Prophet Against Sacrifice provides the most coherent account of Empson's diverse career to date. While exploring the richness of Empson's comic genius, Paul H. Fry serves to discredit the appropriation of his name in recent polemic by the conflicting parties of deconstruction and politicized cultural criticism. He argues that Empson is a larger, more important figure than the orthodox in either camp can acknowledge, deserving to be considered alongside such versatile critics as Walter Benjamin, Kenneth Burke and Roland Barthes.
Download or read book The Structure of Complex Words written by William Empson and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Milton s God written by William 1906- Empson and published by Hassell Street Press. This book was released on 2021-09-09 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Download or read book William Empson Essays on Renaissance Literature Volume 1 Donne and the New Philosophy written by William Empson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1993-03-18 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the success in paperback of William Empson's Essays on Shakespeare (1986), this first volume of his Essays on Renaissance Literature (1993) now appears in an accessible format. The volume gathers Empson's passionate and controversial essays on John Donne in the context of contemporary science, and includes previously unpublished pieces on some of the most influential Renaissance writers and scientists. Edited and introduced by leading Empson scholar John Haffenden, this is a book for anyone interested in the Renaissance, the history of science, and the history of literary criticism. 'Some of these passages have a sweep as grand as Empson found in Donne.' Eric Griffiths, The Times Literary Supplement 'Empson's achievement here as elsewhere comes from the generosity of spirit which made him consistently a great critic.' The New York Review of Books
Download or read book Essays on Shakespeare written by William Empson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1986 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the time of his death in 1984, the poet and critic William Empson was preparing and revising a collection of his essays on Shakespeare. This collection edited by David Pirie, is a book which the literary world has wanted for over half a century. Here, in a single volume, are major readings of Hamlet and Macbeth; a witty and sometimes impassioned defence of Falstaff, and a new piece on the architecture of the Globe theatre and other Renaissance playhouses, in which Empson explores the problems that the design of contemporary stages posed for a working playwright; there are also essays on the narrative poems, A Midsummer Night's Dream and the last plays. The essays demonstrate the subtlety and agility of Empson's mind, as well as his remarkable breadth of knowledge, while the almost racy wit of his informal prose style argues for a literary criticism which should never become solemn if it is to be truly serious.
Download or read book William Empson written by Christopher Norris and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1993-03-18 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William Empson (1906SH84) was one of the twentieth century's most distinctive critical voices, and left a profound mark upon Anglo-American literary culture. This book is the first full study of Empson's literary criticism in its various aspects, taking account of recent developments in critical theory and of Empson's complex SH at times deeply antagonistic SH attitude towards those developments. In their diversity of viewpoint and critical approach the nine essays reflect this sturdy resistance to fashionable trends of 'Eng. Lit.' opinion. Topics include the relations between Empson and Derrida's approaches to the issue of textual 'undecidability', and Empson's prominent (if unwilling role) in the shaping of English as an academic discourse. Christopher Norris's extended introduction charts the ground and offers a major revaluation of Empson's place in the theoretical tradition.
Download or read book The Complete Poems written by William Empson and published by Allan Lane. This book was released on 2000 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Empson's poetry occupies a central place in 20th century literature. Acclaimed as the author of Seven types of ambiguity (1930). William Empson was applauded also for the dazzling intelligence and emotional passion of his poems. T.S. Eliot praised the brain power and intense feeling of his poetry; F.R. Leavis hailed him as the first true successor to John Donne. Other writers as diverse as W.B. Yeats, Dylan Thomas and John Betjeman have admired his elegant, humane and moving work. Robert Lowell told Empson: I think you are the most intelligent poet writing in our language and perhaps the best. I put you with Hardy and Graves and Auden and Philip Larkin
Download or read book Hetta and William written by Jacob Empson and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2012-11-30 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an account of being brought up a household established by two bohemians of their age. Hetta and William met as fellow students at the liars school, an induction course for new recruits to the BBC Foreign Service during World War 2. He was an established poet and literary critic, an academic whose career had been blighted in the UK. She was an orphaned South African, an aspiring sculptor, and a member of the Communist Party. Their marriage was to last over 40 years. Soon after the end of the war they took their two sons with them to Peking, where the civil war was resuming, and the Chinese Communist Party was to establish the new Peoples Republic. Oddly enough, their open marriage worked very well in the expatriate community. On their return to England William was able to resume an academic career in the north of England. Hetta stayed in London. The vicissitudes of their relationship made for an interesting life for the boys, who where sometimes being looked after by childless relations, sometimes roughing it on their own in the huge house that their parents had bought in Hampstead during the war. It was a life of privilege as well as neglect, but never dull.
Download or read book On Empson written by Michael Wood and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-27 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of today's most distinguished critics, a beautifully written exploration of one of the twentieth century's most important literary critics Are literary critics writers? As Michael Wood says, "Not all critics are writers—perhaps most of them are not—and some of them are better when they don't try to be." The British critic and poet William Empson (1906–84), one of the most important and influential critics of the twentieth century, was an exception—a critic who was not only a writer but also a great one. In this brief book, Wood, himself one of the most gifted writers among contemporary critics, explores Empson as a writer, a distinguished poet whose criticism is a brilliant literary performance—and proof that the act of reading can be an unforgettable adventure. Drawing out the singularity and strength of Empson's writing, including its unfailing wit, Wood traces the connections between Empson's poetry and criticism from his first and best-known critical works, Seven Types of Ambiguity and Some Versions of Pastoral, to later books such as Milton's God and The Structure of Complex Words. Wood shows why this pioneer of close reading was both more and less than the inventor of New Criticism—more because he was the greatest English critic since Coleridge, and didn't belong to any school; and less because he had severe differences with many contemporary critics, especially those who dismissed the importance of an author's intentions. Beautifully written and rich with insight, On Empson is an elegant introduction to a unique writer for whom literature was a nonstop form of living.
Download or read book Argufying written by William Empson and published by . This book was released on with total page 667 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Face of the Buddha written by William Empson and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book provides an engaging record of the author's reactions to the cultures and artworks he encountered during his travels, and presents experimental theories about Buddhist art that many authorities of today have found to be remarkably prescient. It also casts important new light on the author's other works, highlighting in particular the affinities of his thinking with that of the religious and philosophical traditions of Asia.
Download or read book Essays on Renaissance Literature written by William Empson and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
