William Empson war ein englischer Literaturkritiker und Dichter, der für seine präzise Lektüre literarischer Werke bekannt ist, die die New Critics maßgeblich beeinflusste. Sein Stil, der oft als witzig und exzentrisch beschrieben wird, brachte ihm den Ruf eines "genialen Kritikers" ein, aber auch den eines kontroversen, manchmal "lizenzierten Spaßmachers". Empsons Arbeit wird für ihre Kraft und unkonventionelle Herangehensweise geschätzt, was ihn zu einer der bedeutendsten Figuren der Literaturkritik des 20. Jahrhunderts macht.
Empson has long been applauded for the dazzling intelligence and emotional passion of his poems. Praised in his lifetime by the likes of T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas and John Betjeman, his reputation contines to be high. His poems take a wide range of themes from metaphysics to melancholy, social climbing to political satire, and from love to loss. schovat popis
Book by Empson, William
Some Versions of Pastoral is considered a landmark of modern literary criticism. Mr. Empson sees the pastoral convention as including not only poems of shepherd life but any work "about the people but not by or for" them. Finding examples in the writing of every country and century, from Mencius to William Faulkner or Céline, he concentrates on an analysis of certain works and forms in English literature, several of them, like Alice in Wonderland , Troilus and Cressida , and proletarian novels not traditionally considered pastoral. His chapter on Milton and Bentley is a precursor of Mr. Empson’s 1961 book, Milton’s God . With virtuoso clarity and perception throughout he brings the student to a new awareness of hidden values in individual works and to the creative possibilities of the language.
Examines seven types of ambiguity, providing examples of it in the writings of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and T.S. Eliot.
Book by Empson