Selected Letters of William EmpsonJohn Haffenden OUP Oxford, 2006 M03 9 - 792 páginas This edited collection of letters by William Empson (1906-1984), one of the foremost writers and literary critics of the twentieth century, ranges across the entirety of his career. Parts of the correspondence record the development of ideas that were to come to fruition in seminal texts including Seven Types of Ambiguity, The Structure of Complex Words, and Milton's God. The topics of other letters range from Shakespeare's Dark Lady to Marvell's marriage and Byron's bisexuality. Empson relished correspondence that was combative, if not downright aggressive. As a result, parts of this edition take the form of a serial disputation with other critics of the period, including Frank Kermode, Helen Gardner, Philip Hobsbaum, and I. A. Richards. Other notable correspondents include A. Alvarez, Bonamy Dobrée, Leslie Fiedler, Graham Hough, C. K. Ogden, George Orwell, Kathleen Raine, John Crowe Ransom, Christopher Ricks, Laura Riding, A. L. Rowse, Stephen Spender, E. M. W. Tillyard, Rosemond Tuve, John Wain, and G. Wilson Knight. All readers of literary history and criticism will stand to benefit from this edition. Empson is universally credited as the man who 'invented' modern literary criticism, so that all of his writings make a signal addition to the canon of his works. This selection provides a context for the evaluation of Empson's total literary output; and in many letters Empson seeks to defend his ideas against both published and personal attacks. This volume not only fills in all the missing links, it adds up to a completely new volume of critical writings by Empson. |
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Página xvii
... whole mental life is based on being social animals,' he wrote as early as 1933. 'Of course the man may quarrel with his company when he gets it, and feel pleased about that but what he chiefly needed was the company.'7 (Six of the most ...
... whole mental life is based on being social animals,' he wrote as early as 1933. 'Of course the man may quarrel with his company when he gets it, and feel pleased about that but what he chiefly needed was the company.'7 (Six of the most ...
Página xxxi
... whole article. But will you please cut out one sentence, three or four pages before the end. It says something like 'This is Protestant, the other is the icy breath of Plato.' I added it in (as teachers do) just because it was more ...
... whole article. But will you please cut out one sentence, three or four pages before the end. It says something like 'This is Protestant, the other is the icy breath of Plato.' I added it in (as teachers do) just because it was more ...
Página xxxii
... whole matter is still confusing unless what happened is said plainly. I really think that this shortened version ought to be printed; a publisher has no business to force me to print what I know to be wrong merely for convenience. Of ...
... whole matter is still confusing unless what happened is said plainly. I really think that this shortened version ought to be printed; a publisher has no business to force me to print what I know to be wrong merely for convenience. Of ...
Página xxxix
... whole structure of his official view of the world.59 His own such joke-phrases included, it turns out, a curious locution, actually a nonce-phrase, that he used for the opening of stanza 6 of his 58 59 WE, letter to Janet Adam Smith, 18 ...
... whole structure of his official view of the world.59 His own such joke-phrases included, it turns out, a curious locution, actually a nonce-phrase, that he used for the opening of stanza 6 of his 58 59 WE, letter to Janet Adam Smith, 18 ...
Página xlvi
... whole thing was and rewriting it completely.'67 The issue of this volume of selected letters is by no means meant to imply that I have had the pick of every possible Empson missive: that is not the case (it would be beyond human ...
... whole thing was and rewriting it completely.'67 The issue of this volume of selected letters is by no means meant to imply that I have had the pick of every possible Empson missive: that is not the case (it would be beyond human ...
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