Vanderbilt University (BA) Tulane University (MA) Exeter College, Oxford (BA, BLitt)
Occupation(s)
Literary critic, academic
Spouse
Edith Amy Blanchord
Cleanth Brooks (/ˈkliːænθ/KLEE-anth;[1] October 16, 1906 – May 10, 1994) was an American literary critic and professor. He is best known for his contributions to New Criticism in the mid-20th 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.
^"Wolfner Library". Archived from the original on 2013-12-03. Retrieved 2013-11-28.
in Murray, Kentucky, Brooks was born to a Methodist minister, the Reverend CleanthBrooks Sr., and Bessie Lee Witherspoon Brooks (Leitch 2001). He was...
Southern Writers. He founded the literary journal The Southern Review with CleanthBrooks in 1935. He received the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel for All the...
approach, were important to the development of a New Critical methodology. CleanthBrooks, John Crowe Ransom, and W. K. Wimsatt also made significant contributions...
intuition, nature and history, subsumed within a vision of eternal order". CleanthBrooks asks whether, in this poem, Yeats chooses idealism or materialism and...
itself functions as a canonisation of the pair of lovers. New Critic CleanthBrooks used the poem, along with Alexander Pope's "An Essay on Man" and William...
reception, and most broadly, ideology. For these critics, including CleanthBrooks, William K. Wimsatt, John Crowe Ransom, and Allen Tate, only close reading...
Studies in the Structure of Poetry is a 1947 collection of essays by CleanthBrooks. It is considered a seminal text in the New Critical school of literary...
in The Well-Wrought Urn, a seminal work of the New Criticism by CleanthBrooks. Brooks argued that meaning in poetry is irreducible, because "a true poem...
Hartman: Yale school of deconstruction John Crowe Ransom: New Criticism CleanthBrooks: New Criticism Kenneth Burke: Rhetoric studies Elaine Showalter: Feminist...
Critics movement. CleanthBrooks played an integral role in modernizing the organic unity principle. In The Well Wrought Urn, Brooks used the poem "The...
Wondering if Lucy more resembles the violet or the star, the critic CleanthBrooks (1906–1994) concludes that while Wordsworth likely views her as "the...
Southern Lit Alliance in Chattanooga, TN. Southern Literature. A.R. Ammons CleanthBrooks Fred Chappell George Core James Dickey Ralph Ellison Horton Foote Shelby...
Faulkner." The New Critics became interested in Faulkner's work, with CleanthBrooks writing The Yoknapatawpha Country and Michael Millgate writing The Achievement...
During her undergraduate and graduate years, her teachers included CleanthBrooks, Harold Bloom, Richard B. Sewall, Maynard Mack, Maurice Sendak, Richard...
Blotner, p. 236 Brooks, p. 114 Brooks, p. 106 Joseph Leo Blotner (1974): Faulkner: a biography. New York, Random House. CleanthBrooks (1991): William...
Understanding Poetry was an American college textbook and poetry anthology by CleanthBrooks and Robert Penn Warren, first published in 1938. The book influenced...
biographical issues W. K. Wimsatt, F. R. Leavis, John Crowe Ransom, CleanthBrooks, Robert Penn Warren New historicism – which examines the work through...
evening in London. At Sewanee the program included Denis Donoghue, CleanthBrooks, Howard Nemerov, William Jay Smith, Radcliffe Squires, Walter Sullivan...
Platonist philosopher Richard M. Weaver, founder of New Criticism CleanthBrooks, mathematician Lawrence C. Evans, Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare...
Tate, Peter Taylor, Robie Macauley, Robert Penn Warren, E.L. Doctorow, CleanthBrooks, Richard M. Weaver, James Wright, and Constantinos Patrides (himself...
Anthea Butler; literary writers and critics such as Elizabeth Lawrence, CleanthBrooks, Phillis Wheatley, Thomas Wolfe, Paul Green, and Wilma Dykeman; prominent...
Crowe going on to edit The Kenyon Review, and Ransom together with CleanthBrooks to found another (1935) Southern Review. In the final phase, both established...
Yale. During his teaching career, he assisted Robert Penn Warren and CleanthBrooks in the writing of several college textbooks on literature. Milch's poetry...
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