Cleanth Brooks
Encyclopedia
Cleanth Brooks was an influential American literary critic and professor. He is best known for his contributions to New Criticism
in the mid-twentieth century and for revolutionizing the teaching of poetry in American higher education. His best-known works, The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry
(1947) and Modern Poetry and the Tradition (1939), argue for the centrality of ambiguity
and paradox
as a way of understanding poetry. With his writing, Brooks helped to formulate formalist criticism
, emphasizing “the interior life of a poem” (Leitch 2001) and codifying the principles of close reading.
Brooks was also the preeminent critic of Southern literature
, writing classic texts on William Faulkner
, and co-founder of the influential journal, The Southern Review (Leitch 2001) with Robert Penn Warren
.
, Brooks was born to a Methodist minister, the Reverend Cleanth Brooks Sr., and Bessie Lee Witherspoon Brooks (Leitch 2001). He was one of 3 children, 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. 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. Cleanth mentioned on more than one occasion that she so doted on Murray (Hewitt) that she no longer had a relationship with Cleanth and William. Attending McTyeire School, a private academy, he received a classical education and went on to study at Vanderbilt University
in Nashville, Tennessee
, where he received his B.A.
in 1928 (Leitch 2001). In 1928, Brooks received his Master of Arts
from Tulane University
and went on to study at Exeter College, Oxford
, as a Rhodes Scholar. He received his B.A. (with honors) in 1931 and his Bachelor of Literature the following year. Brooks then returned to the United States and from 1932 to 1947 was a professor of English at Louisiana State University
in Baton Rouge (Singh 1991). In 1934, he married Edith Amy Blanchord. He was also very kind and loving to Murray's daughter Diana Rae Brooks.
, John Crowe Ransom
, Andrew Lytle, and Donald Davidson
(Singh 1991). Studying with Ransom and Warren, Brooks became involved in two significant literary movements: the Southern Agrarians
and the Fugitives (Singh 1991). Brooks admitted to reading the Southern Agrarian manifesto
, I’ll Take My Stand (1930) “over and over” (qtd. in Leitch 2001). While he never argued for the movement’s conservative Southern traditions, he “learned a great deal” (qtd. in Leitch 2001) and found the Agrarian position valuable and “unobjectionable” (qtd. in Leitch 2001): “They asked that we consider what the good life is or ought to be” (qtd. in Leitch 2001).
The Fugitive Movement similarly influenced Brooks’ approach to criticism. The Fugitives, a group of Southern poets consisting of such influential writers as John Crowe Ransom
, Allen Tate
, Donald Davidson, and Robert Penn Warren
, met Saturday evenings to read and discuss poetry written by members of the group (Singh 1991). The discussion was based on intensive readings and included considerations of a poem’s form, structure, meter, rhyme scheme, and imagery (Singh 1991). This close reading formed the foundation on which the New Critical movement was based and helped shape Brooks’ approach to criticism (Singh 1991).
. In 1935, Brooks and Warren founded The Southern Review. Until 1942, they co-edited the journal, publishing works by many influential authors, including Eudora Welty
, Kenneth Burke
, and Ford Madox Ford
. The journal was known for its criticism and creative writing, marking it as one of the leading journals of the time (Leitch 2001).
In addition, Brooks's and Warren’s collaboration led to innovations in the teaching of poetry and literature. At Louisiana State University
, prompted by their students’ inability to interpret poetry, the two put together a booklet that modeled close reading through examples (Leitch 2001). The booklet was a success and laid the foundation for a number of best-selling textbooks: An Approach to Literature (1936), Understanding Poetry
(1938), Understanding Fiction (1943), Modern Rhetoric (1949), and, in collaboration with Robert Heilman, Understanding Drama (1945). Brooks’ two most influential works also came out of the success of the booklet: Modern Poetry and the Tradition (1939) and The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry
(1947) (Leitch 2001).
From 1941 to 1975, Brooks held many academic positions and received a number of distinguished fellowship
s and honorary doctorates. In 1941, he worked as a visiting professor at the University of Texas, Austin. From 1947 to 1975, he was an English professor at Yale University
, where he held the position of Gray Professor of Rhetoric and Gray Professor of Rhetoric Emeritus from 1960 until his retirement, except 1964 to 1966 (Singh 1991). His tenure
at Yale was marked by ongoing research into Southern literature, which resulted in the publication of Brooks’ studies of William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County
(1963, 1978) (Leitch 2001). At Yale, he accepted honorary membership in Manuscript Society
. In 1948, he was a fellow of the Kenyon School of English. From 1951 to 1953, he was a fellow of the Library of Congress
in Washington, D.C.
and was a visiting professor at the University of Southern California
, Los Angeles
. During this time, he received the Guggenheim Fellowship
and held it again in 1960. From 1963 to 1972, he was awarded honorary doctorates of literature from Upsala College
, the University of Kentucky
, the University of Exeter
, Washington and Lee University
, Saint Louis University
, Tulane University
, and Centenary College NJ
(Singh 1991).
Brooks’ other positions included working as a cultural attaché
for the American embassy in London
from 1964 to 1966. Further, he held memberships in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the American Philosophical Society
(Singh 1991).
The National Endowment for the Humanities
selected Brooks for the 1985 Jefferson Lecture
, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities
. He delivered the lecture both in Washington and at Tulane University in New Orleans, and it was subsequently included as "Literature in a Technological Age" in a collection of his essays.
New Criticism involves examining a poem’s "technical elements, textual patterns, and incongruities" (Leitch 2001) with a kind of scientific rigor and precision. From I. A. Richards
’ The Principles of Literary Criticism and Practical Criticism, Brooks formulated guidelines for interpreting poetry (Leitch 2001). 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 contexts), and his and Warren’s frustration with trying to teach college students to analyze poetry and literature (Leitch 2001).
Brooks and Warren were teaching using textbooks "full of biographical facts and impressionistic criticism" (Singh 1991). The textbooks failed to show how poetic language differed from the language of an editorial or a work of non-fiction. From this frustration, Brooks and Warren published Understanding Poetry. In the book, the authors assert poetry should be taught as poetry, and the critic should resist reducing a poem to a simple paraphrase, explicating it through biographical or historical contexts, and interpreting it didactically (Singh 1991). For Brooks 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 1991).
Brooks took this notion of paraphrase and developed it further in his classic The Well Wrought Urn. The book is a polemic
against the tendency for critics to reduce a poem to a single narrative or didactic message. He describes summative, reductionist reading of poetry with a phrase still popular today: "The Heresy of Paraphrase
" (Leitch 2001). In fact, he argued poetry serves no didactic purpose because producing some kind of statement would be counter to a poem’s purpose. Brooks argues "through irony, paradox, ambiguity and other rhetorical and poetic devices of his or her art, the poet works constantly to resist any reduction of the poem to a paraphrasable core, favoring the presentation of conflicting facets of theme and patterns of resolved stresses" (Leitch 2001).
In addition to arguing against historical, biographical, and didactic readings of a poem, Brooks believed that a poem should not be criticized on the basis of its effect on the reader. In an essay called “The Formalist Critics,” he says that “the formalist critic assumes an ideal reader: that is, instead of focusing on the varying spectrum of possible readings, he attempts to find a central point of reference from which he can focus upon the structure of the poem or novel” (qtd. in Rivkin, 24). While he admits that it is problematic to assume such a reference point, he sees it as the only viable option. 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. 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 24). Thus, Brooks does not accept the idea of considering critics’ emotional responses to works of literature as a legitimate approach to criticism. 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 24). For Brooks, nearly everything a critic evaluates must come from within the text itself. This opinion is similar to that expressed by W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. 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. in Adams, 1029, 1027).
, and it is possible to derive a historical and biographical context from the language the poet uses (Singh 1991). 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 2001).
New Criticism was accused by critics of having a contradictory nature. Brooks writes, on the one hand, "the resistance which any good poem sets up against all attempts to paraphrase it" (qtd. in Leitch 2001) is the result of the poet manipulating and warping language to create new meaning. On the other hand, he admonishes the unity and harmony in a poem’s aesthetics
. These seemingly contradictory forces in a poem create tension and paradoxical irony according to Brooks, but critics questioned whether irony leads to a poem’s unity or undermines it (Leitch 2001). Poststructuralists
in particular saw a poem’s resistance and warped language as competing with its harmony and balance that Brooks celebrates (Leitch 2001).
R. S. Crane was particularly hostile to the views of Brooks and the other New Critics. In “The Critical Monism of Cleanth Brooks,” Crane writes that under Brooks’s view of a poem’s unity being achieved through the irony and paradox of the opposing forces it contains, the world’s most perfect example of such an ironic poem would be Albert Einstein’s equation E=mc2, which equates matter and energy at a constant rate (Searle).
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 2001). This approach to criticism, Brooks argued, "denied the authority of the work" (Leitch 2001).
was an unparalleled success and remains “a classic manual for the intellectual and imaginative skills required for the understanding of poetry” (Singh 1991). Further, critics praise Brooks and Warren for “introducing New Criticism with commendable clarity” (Singh 1991) and for teaching students how to read and interpret poetry. Arthur Mizener commended Brooks and Warren for offering a new way of teaching poetry:
In an obituary for Brooks, John W. Stevenson
of Converse College
notes Brooks “redirect[ed] and revolutionize[d] the teaching of literature in American colleges and universities” (1994). Further, Stevenson admits Brooks was “the person who brought excitement and passion to the study of literature” (1994) and “whose work…became the model for a whole profession” (1994).
Along with New Criticism, Brooks’ studies of Faulkner, Southern literature, and T. S. Eliot
’s The Waste Land
(appearing in Modern Poetry and the Tradition) remain classic texts. Mark Royden Winchell calls Brooks’ text on Faulkner “the best book yet on the works of William Faulkner” (1996). Eliot himself commended Brooks in a letter for Brooks’ critique of “The Waste Land” (Singh 1991). Further, Winchell praises Brooks for “help[ing] invent the modern literary quarterly” (1996) through the success of The Southern Review.
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. in Singh 1991). Elsewhere, Ransom has even gone so far as to describe Brooks as a “spell binder” (qtd. in Singh 1991).
New Criticism
New Criticism was a movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic...
in the mid-twentieth century and for revolutionizing the teaching of poetry in American higher education. His best-known works, The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry
The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry
The Well-Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry is a 1947 collection of essays by Cleanth Brooks. It is considered a seminal text in the New Critical school of literary criticism...
(1947) and Modern Poetry and the Tradition (1939), argue for the centrality of ambiguity
Ambiguity
Ambiguity of words or phrases is the ability to express more than one interpretation. It is distinct from vagueness, which is a statement about the lack of precision contained or available in the information.Context may play a role in resolving ambiguity...
and paradox
Paradox
Similar to Circular reasoning, A paradox is a seemingly true statement or group of statements that lead to a contradiction or a situation which seems to defy logic or intuition...
as a way of understanding poetry. With his writing, Brooks helped to formulate formalist criticism
Formalism (literature)
Formalism is a school of literary criticism and literary theory having mainly to do with structural purposes of a particular text.In literary theory, formalism refers to critical approaches that analyze, interpret, or evaluate the inherent features of a text. These features include not only grammar...
, emphasizing “the interior life of a poem” (Leitch 2001) and codifying the principles of close reading.
Brooks was also the preeminent critic of Southern literature
Southern literature
Southern literature is defined as American literature about the Southern United States or by writers from this region...
, writing classic texts on William Faulkner
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
, and co-founder of the influential journal, The Southern Review (Leitch 2001) with Robert Penn Warren
Robert Penn Warren
Robert Penn Warren was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the influential literary journal The Southern Review with Cleanth Brooks in 1935...
.
The early years
On October 16, 1906 in Murray, KentuckyMurray, Kentucky
Murray is a city in Calloway County, Kentucky, United States. The population was 17,741 at the 2010 census and has a micropolitan area population of 37,191. It is the 22nd largest city in Kentucky...
, Brooks was born to a Methodist minister, the Reverend Cleanth Brooks Sr., and Bessie Lee Witherspoon Brooks (Leitch 2001). He was one of 3 children, 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. 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. Cleanth mentioned on more than one occasion that she so doted on Murray (Hewitt) that she no longer had a relationship with Cleanth and William. Attending McTyeire School, a private academy, he received a classical education and went on to study at Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University is a private research university located in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1873, the university is named for shipping and rail magnate "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided Vanderbilt its initial $1 million endowment despite having never been to the...
in Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in Davidson County, in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the health care, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home...
, where he received his B.A.
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
in 1928 (Leitch 2001). In 1928, Brooks received his Master of Arts
Master of Arts (postgraduate)
A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...
from Tulane University
Tulane University
Tulane University is a private, nonsectarian research university located in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States...
and went on to study at Exeter College, Oxford
Exeter College, Oxford
Exeter College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England and the fourth oldest college of the University. The main entrance is on the east side of Turl Street...
, as a Rhodes Scholar. He received his B.A. (with honors) in 1931 and his Bachelor of Literature the following year. Brooks then returned to the United States and from 1932 to 1947 was a professor of English at Louisiana State University
Louisiana State University
Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, most often referred to as Louisiana State University, or LSU, is a public coeducational university located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The University was founded in 1853 in what is now known as Pineville, Louisiana, under the name...
in Baton Rouge (Singh 1991). In 1934, he married Edith Amy Blanchord. He was also very kind and loving to Murray's daughter Diana Rae Brooks.
The Vanderbilt years
During his studies at Vanderbilt, he met literary critics and future collaborators Robert Penn WarrenRobert Penn Warren
Robert Penn Warren was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the influential literary journal The Southern Review with Cleanth Brooks in 1935...
, John Crowe Ransom
John Crowe Ransom
John Crowe Ransom was an American poet, essayist, magazine editor, and professor.-Life:...
, Andrew Lytle, and Donald Davidson
Donald Davidson (poet)
Donald Grady Davidson was a U.S. poet, essayist, social and literary critic, and author...
(Singh 1991). Studying with Ransom and Warren, Brooks became involved in two significant literary movements: the Southern Agrarians
Southern Agrarians
The Southern Agrarians were a group of twelve American writers, poets, essayists, and novelists, all with roots in the Southern United States, who joined together to write a pro-Southern agrarian manifesto, a...
and the Fugitives (Singh 1991). Brooks admitted to reading the Southern Agrarian manifesto
Manifesto
A manifesto is a public declaration of principles and intentions, often political in nature. Manifestos relating to religious belief are generally referred to as creeds. Manifestos may also be life stance-related.-Etymology:...
, I’ll Take My Stand (1930) “over and over” (qtd. in Leitch 2001). While he never argued for the movement’s conservative Southern traditions, he “learned a great deal” (qtd. in Leitch 2001) and found the Agrarian position valuable and “unobjectionable” (qtd. in Leitch 2001): “They asked that we consider what the good life is or ought to be” (qtd. in Leitch 2001).
The Fugitive Movement similarly influenced Brooks’ approach to criticism. The Fugitives, a group of Southern poets consisting of such influential writers as John Crowe Ransom
John Crowe Ransom
John Crowe Ransom was an American poet, essayist, magazine editor, and professor.-Life:...
, Allen Tate
Allen Tate
John Orley Allen Tate was an American poet, essayist, social commentator, and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1943 to 1944.-Life:...
, Donald Davidson, and Robert Penn Warren
Robert Penn Warren
Robert Penn Warren was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the influential literary journal The Southern Review with Cleanth Brooks in 1935...
, met Saturday evenings to read and discuss poetry written by members of the group (Singh 1991). The discussion was based on intensive readings and included considerations of a poem’s form, structure, meter, rhyme scheme, and imagery (Singh 1991). This close reading formed the foundation on which the New Critical movement was based and helped shape Brooks’ approach to criticism (Singh 1991).
Academic life and work
While attending the University of Oxford, Brooks continued his friendship with fellow Vanderbilt graduate and Rhodes Scholar, Robert Penn Warren (Leitch 2001). In 1934, Warren joined the English department at Louisiana State, leading Brooks and Warren to collaborate on many works of criticism and pedagogyPedagogy
Pedagogy is the study of being a teacher or the process of teaching. The term generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction....
. In 1935, Brooks and Warren founded The Southern Review. Until 1942, they co-edited the journal, publishing works by many influential authors, including Eudora Welty
Eudora Welty
Eudora Alice Welty was an American author of short stories and novels about the American South. Her novel The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Welty was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous awards. She was the first living author to have her works published...
, Kenneth Burke
Kenneth Burke
Kenneth Duva Burke was a major American literary theorist and philosopher. Burke's primary interests were in rhetoric and aesthetics.-Personal history:...
, and Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals, The English Review and The Transatlantic Review, were instrumental in the development of early 20th-century English literature...
. The journal was known for its criticism and creative writing, marking it as one of the leading journals of the time (Leitch 2001).
In addition, Brooks's and Warren’s collaboration led to innovations in the teaching of poetry and literature. At Louisiana State University
Louisiana State University
Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, most often referred to as Louisiana State University, or LSU, is a public coeducational university located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The University was founded in 1853 in what is now known as Pineville, Louisiana, under the name...
, prompted by their students’ inability to interpret poetry, the two put together a booklet that modeled close reading through examples (Leitch 2001). The booklet was a success and laid the foundation for a number of best-selling textbooks: An Approach to Literature (1936), Understanding Poetry
Understanding Poetry
Understanding Poetry was an influential American college textbook and poetry anthology by Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, first published in 1938. The book influenced New Criticism and went through its fourth edition in 1976....
(1938), Understanding Fiction (1943), Modern Rhetoric (1949), and, in collaboration with Robert Heilman, Understanding Drama (1945). Brooks’ two most influential works also came out of the success of the booklet: Modern Poetry and the Tradition (1939) and The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry
The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry
The Well-Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry is a 1947 collection of essays by Cleanth Brooks. It is considered a seminal text in the New Critical school of literary criticism...
(1947) (Leitch 2001).
From 1941 to 1975, Brooks held many academic positions and received a number of distinguished fellowship
Fellowship
Fellowship may refer to:* An academic position: see fellow* A merit-based scholarship, or form of academic financial aid* Fellowship , a period of medical training after a residency...
s and honorary doctorates. In 1941, he worked as a visiting professor at the University of Texas, Austin. From 1947 to 1975, he was an English professor at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, where he held the position of Gray Professor of Rhetoric and Gray Professor of Rhetoric Emeritus from 1960 until his retirement, except 1964 to 1966 (Singh 1991). His tenure
Tenure
Tenure commonly refers to life tenure in a job and specifically to a senior academic's contractual right not to have his or her position terminated without just cause.-19th century:...
at Yale was marked by ongoing research into Southern literature, which resulted in the publication of Brooks’ studies of William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County
Yoknapatawpha County
Yoknapatawpha County is a fictional county created by the American author William Faulkner, based upon and inspired by Lafayette County, Mississippi and its county seat of Oxford, Mississippi...
(1963, 1978) (Leitch 2001). At Yale, he accepted honorary membership in Manuscript Society
Manuscript Society
Manuscript Society is a senior secret society at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Toward the end of each junior year, 16 undergraduates are "tapped" to be inducted into the society, which meets twice weekly for dinner and discussion...
. In 1948, he was a fellow of the Kenyon School of English. From 1951 to 1953, he was a fellow of the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
and was a visiting professor at the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
, Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
. During this time, he received the Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
and held it again in 1960. From 1963 to 1972, he was awarded honorary doctorates of literature from Upsala College
Upsala College
Upsala College was a private college in East Orange, New Jersey, USA, founded in 1893. Construction of the campus started in 1900. The college closed in 1995, after several years of financial problems.-History:...
, the University of Kentucky
University of Kentucky
The University of Kentucky, also known as UK, is a public co-educational university and is one of the state's two land-grant universities, located in Lexington, Kentucky...
, the University of Exeter
University of Exeter
The University of Exeter is a public university in South West England. It belongs to the 1994 Group, an association of 19 of the United Kingdom's smaller research-intensive universities....
, Washington and Lee University
Washington and Lee University
Washington and Lee University is a private liberal arts college in Lexington, Virginia, United States.The classical school from which Washington and Lee descended was established in 1749 as Augusta Academy, about north of its present location. In 1776 it was renamed Liberty Hall in a burst of...
, Saint Louis University
Saint Louis University
Saint Louis University is a private, co-educational Jesuit university located in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. Founded in 1818 by the Most Reverend Louis Guillaume Valentin Dubourg SLU is the oldest university west of the Mississippi River. It is one of 28 member institutions of the...
, Tulane University
Tulane University
Tulane University is a private, nonsectarian research university located in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States...
, and Centenary College NJ
Centenary College of New Jersey
Centenary College was founded in 1867 by the Newark Conference of the United Methodist Church. Centenary has evolved from a coeducational preparatory school to a girls' preparatory school , to a Junior college for women , to a four-year women's college , to a coeducational...
(Singh 1991).
Brooks’ other positions included working as a cultural attaché
Attaché
Attaché is a French term in diplomacy referring to a person who is assigned to the diplomatic or administrative staff of a higher placed person or another service or agency...
for the American embassy in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
from 1964 to 1966. Further, he held memberships in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the American Philosophical Society
American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society, founded in 1743, and located in Philadelphia, Pa., is an eminent scholarly organization of international reputation, that promotes useful knowledge in the sciences and humanities through excellence in scholarly research, professional meetings, publications,...
(Singh 1991).
The National Endowment for the Humanities
National Endowment for the Humanities
The National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent federal agency of the United States established by the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. The NEH is located at...
selected Brooks for the 1985 Jefferson Lecture
Jefferson Lecture
The Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities is an honorary lecture series established in 1972 by the National Endowment for the Humanities . According to the NEH, the Lecture is "the highest honor the federal government confers for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities."-History of...
, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities
Humanities
The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....
. He delivered the lecture both in Washington and at Tulane University in New Orleans, and it was subsequently included as "Literature in a Technological Age" in a collection of his essays.
Brooks and New Criticism
Brooks was the central figure of New Criticism, a movement that emphasized structural and textual analysis—close reading—over historical or biographical analysis. 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. in Leitch 2001), a critic can effectively interpret and explicate the text. For him, the crux of New Criticism is that literary study be "concerned primarily with the work itself" (qtd. in Leitch 2001). In "The Formalist Critics," Brooks offers "some articles of faith" (qtd. in Leitch 2001) to which he subscribes. These articles exemplify the tenets of New Criticism:- That the primary concern of criticism is with the problem of unity—the kind of whole which the literary work forms or fails to form, and the relation of the various parts to each other in building up this whole.
- That in a successful work, format and content cannot be separated.
- That form is meaning.
- That literature is ultimately metaphorical and symbolic.
- That the general and the universal are not seized upon by abstraction, but got at through the concrete and the particular.
- That literature is not a surrogate for religion.
- That, as Allen Tate says, "specific moral problems" are the subject matter of literature, but that the purpose of literature is not to point a moral.
- That the principles of criticism define the area relevant to literary criticism; they do not constitute a method for carrying out the criticism (qtd. in Leitch 2001).
New Criticism involves examining a poem’s "technical elements, textual patterns, and incongruities" (Leitch 2001) with a kind of scientific rigor and precision. From I. A. Richards
I. A. Richards
Ivor Armstrong Richards was an influential English literary critic and rhetorician....
’ The Principles of Literary Criticism and Practical Criticism, Brooks formulated guidelines for interpreting poetry (Leitch 2001). 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 contexts), and his and Warren’s frustration with trying to teach college students to analyze poetry and literature (Leitch 2001).
Brooks and Warren were teaching using textbooks "full of biographical facts and impressionistic criticism" (Singh 1991). The textbooks failed to show how poetic language differed from the language of an editorial or a work of non-fiction. From this frustration, Brooks and Warren published Understanding Poetry. In the book, the authors assert poetry should be taught as poetry, and the critic should resist reducing a poem to a simple paraphrase, explicating it through biographical or historical contexts, and interpreting it didactically (Singh 1991). For Brooks 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 1991).
Brooks took this notion of paraphrase and developed it further in his classic The Well Wrought Urn. The book is a polemic
Polemic
A polemic is a variety of arguments or controversies made against one opinion, doctrine, or person. Other variations of argument are debate and discussion...
against the tendency for critics to reduce a poem to a single narrative or didactic message. He describes summative, reductionist reading of poetry with a phrase still popular today: "The Heresy of Paraphrase
The Heresy of Paraphrase
"The Heresy of Paraphrase" is the title of a chapter in The Well-Wrought Urn, a seminal work of the New Criticism by Cleanth Brooks. Brooks argued that meaning in poetry is irreducible, because "a true poem is a simulacrum of reality...an experience rather than any mere statement about experience...
" (Leitch 2001). In fact, he argued poetry serves no didactic purpose because producing some kind of statement would be counter to a poem’s purpose. Brooks argues "through irony, paradox, ambiguity and other rhetorical and poetic devices of his or her art, the poet works constantly to resist any reduction of the poem to a paraphrasable core, favoring the presentation of conflicting facets of theme and patterns of resolved stresses" (Leitch 2001).
In addition to arguing against historical, biographical, and didactic readings of a poem, Brooks believed that a poem should not be criticized on the basis of its effect on the reader. In an essay called “The Formalist Critics,” he says that “the formalist critic assumes an ideal reader: that is, instead of focusing on the varying spectrum of possible readings, he attempts to find a central point of reference from which he can focus upon the structure of the poem or novel” (qtd. in Rivkin, 24). While he admits that it is problematic to assume such a reference point, he sees it as the only viable option. 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. 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 24). Thus, Brooks does not accept the idea of considering critics’ emotional responses to works of literature as a legitimate approach to criticism. 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 24). For Brooks, nearly everything a critic evaluates must come from within the text itself. This opinion is similar to that expressed by W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. 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. in Adams, 1029, 1027).
Reaction to New Criticism
Because New Criticism isolated the text and excluded historical and biographical contexts, critics argued as early as 1942 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" (1350). His reputation suffered in the seventies and eighties when criticism of New Criticism increased. Brooks rebuffed the accusations that New Criticism has an "antihistorical thrust" (Leitch 2001) and a "neglect of context" (Leitch 2001). He insisted he was not excluding context because a poem possesses organic unityOrganic unity
Organic Unity is the idea that a thing is made up of interdependent parts. For example, a body is made up of its constituent organs, or a society is made up of its constituent social roles....
, and it is possible to derive a historical and biographical context from the language the poet uses (Singh 1991). He argues "A poem by Donne or Marvell
Marvell
-People:* Andrew Marvell, 17th-century English metaphysical poet* Marvell Wynne , American soccer player* Marvell Wynne , American baseball player-Businesses:* Marvell Technology Group, U.S. semiconductor company...
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 2001).
New Criticism was accused by critics of having a contradictory nature. Brooks writes, on the one hand, "the resistance which any good poem sets up against all attempts to paraphrase it" (qtd. in Leitch 2001) is the result of the poet manipulating and warping language to create new meaning. On the other hand, he admonishes the unity and harmony in a poem’s aesthetics
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
. These seemingly contradictory forces in a poem create tension and paradoxical irony according to Brooks, but critics questioned whether irony leads to a poem’s unity or undermines it (Leitch 2001). Poststructuralists
Post-structuralism
Post-structuralism is a label formulated by American academics to denote the heterogeneous works of a series of French intellectuals who came to international prominence in the 1960s and '70s...
in particular saw a poem’s resistance and warped language as competing with its harmony and balance that Brooks celebrates (Leitch 2001).
R. S. Crane was particularly hostile to the views of Brooks and the other New Critics. In “The Critical Monism of Cleanth Brooks,” Crane writes that under Brooks’s view of a poem’s unity being achieved through the irony and paradox of the opposing forces it contains, the world’s most perfect example of such an ironic poem would be Albert Einstein’s equation E=mc2, which equates matter and energy at a constant rate (Searle).
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 2001). This approach to criticism, Brooks argued, "denied the authority of the work" (Leitch 2001).
Influence
Understanding PoetryUnderstanding Poetry
Understanding Poetry was an influential American college textbook and poetry anthology by Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, first published in 1938. The book influenced New Criticism and went through its fourth edition in 1976....
was an unparalleled success and remains “a classic manual for the intellectual and imaginative skills required for the understanding of poetry” (Singh 1991). Further, critics praise Brooks and Warren for “introducing New Criticism with commendable clarity” (Singh 1991) and for teaching students how to read and interpret poetry. Arthur Mizener commended Brooks and Warren for offering a new way of teaching poetry:
For us the real revolution in critical theory…was heralded by the publication, in 1938, of Understanding Poetry…for many of us who were preparing ourselves to teach English is those years….this book…came as a kind of revelation. 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. in Singh 1991).
In an obituary for Brooks, John W. Stevenson
John Stevenson
-Military:*John Dunlap Stevenson, Union Civil War general*John D. Stevenson *John H. Stevenson , member of the American Navy during the American Civil War and the Spanish-American War-Politicians:...
of Converse College
Converse College
Converse College is a liberal arts women's college in Spartanburg, South Carolina, USA. It was established by a group of Spartanburg citizens and named after Dexter Edgar Converse.-History:...
notes Brooks “redirect[ed] and revolutionize[d] the teaching of literature in American colleges and universities” (1994). Further, Stevenson admits Brooks was “the person who brought excitement and passion to the study of literature” (1994) and “whose work…became the model for a whole profession” (1994).
Along with New Criticism, Brooks’ studies of Faulkner, Southern literature, and T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
’s The Waste Land
The Waste Land
The Waste Land[A] is a 434-line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922. It has been called "one of the most important poems of the 20th century." Despite the poem's obscurity—its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location and time, its...
(appearing in Modern Poetry and the Tradition) remain classic texts. Mark Royden Winchell calls Brooks’ text on Faulkner “the best book yet on the works of William Faulkner” (1996). Eliot himself commended Brooks in a letter for Brooks’ critique of “The Waste Land” (Singh 1991). Further, Winchell praises Brooks for “help[ing] invent the modern literary quarterly” (1996) through the success of The Southern Review.
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. in Singh 1991). Elsewhere, Ransom has even gone so far as to describe Brooks as a “spell binder” (qtd. in Singh 1991).
Monographs
- 1935. The Relation of the Alabama-Georgia Dialect to the Provincial Dialects of Great Britain
- 1936. An Approach to Literature
- 1938. Understanding PoetryUnderstanding PoetryUnderstanding Poetry was an influential American college textbook and poetry anthology by Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, first published in 1938. The book influenced New Criticism and went through its fourth edition in 1976....
- 1939. Modern Poetry and the Tradition
- 1943. Understanding Fiction
- 1947. The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of PoetryThe Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of PoetryThe Well-Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry is a 1947 collection of essays by Cleanth Brooks. It is considered a seminal text in the New Critical school of literary criticism...
- 1957. Literary Criticism: A Short History
- 1963. William Faulkner: The Yoknapatawpha Country
- 1973. American Literature: The Makers and the Making
- 1978. William Faulkner: Toward Yoknapatawpha and Beyond
- 1983. William Faulkner: First Encounters
- 1985. The Language of the American South
Essay collections
- 1964. The Hidden God: Studies in Hemingway, Faulkner, Yeats, Eliot, and Warren
- 1971. A Shaping Joy: Studies in the Writer's Craft
- 1991. Historical Evidence and the Reading of Seventeenth-Century Poetry
- 1995. Community, Religion, and Literature: Essays
Further reading
- Grimshaw, James A., ed. Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren: A Literary Correspondence. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998.
- Lentricchia, FrankFrank LentricchiaFrank Lentricchia is an American literary critic, novelist, and film teacher. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. from Duke University in 1966 and 1963 respectively after receiving a B.A. from Utica College in 1962...
. “The Place of Cleanth Brooks.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 29.2 (Winter 1970): 235-251. - Vinh, Alphonse, ed. Cleanth Brooks and Allen Tate: Collected Letters, 1993-1976. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998.