Selected Letters of William Empson

Buch | Softcover

792 Seiten

2009
Oxford University Press (Verlag)
978-0-19-953986-4 (ISBN)

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William Empson is one of the foremost writers and critics of the twentieth century. This correspondence shows him working out his ideas and gives the fullest possible picture of his robust interactions with many other prominent writers, including the likes of F. R. Leavis, Helen Gardner, Frank Kermode, Christopher Norris, and I. A. Richards.

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 Dobr?e, 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.

1. The BBC War ; 2. The War within the BBC ; 3. Chinabound ; 4. Sounding the South: Kenyon College, Summer 1948 ; 5. Siege and Liberation ; 6. The New China ; 7. Changes in China; and Kenyon Again ; 8. Quitting Communist china ; 9. Final Reckoning: The Affair of Fei Hsiao-t'ung ; 10. 'A Mighty Raspberry': iThe Structure of Complex Words/i ; 11. Homing to Yorkshire ; 12. From Poetry to the Queen ; 13. Menage a Trois ; 14. The Anti-Christian: iMilton's God/i ; 15. 'They think good literature is a tremendous scolding': From Sheffield to Legon ; 16. The Road to Retirement ; 17. Rescuing Donne and Coleridge ; 18. Roamings in Retirement ; 19. iFaustus/i: Finale ; Acknowledgements ; Abbreviations ; Introduction ; Note on the text ; Table of dates ; List of resipients and dates ; Text of letters ; Glossary of names ; Index

Erscheint lt. Verlag	22.1.2009
Verlagsort	Oxford
Sprache	englisch
Maße	155 x 233 mm
Gewicht	1174 g
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
	Literatur ► Briefe / Tagebücher
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
ISBN-10	0-19-953986-3 / 0199539863
ISBN-13	978-0-19-953986-4 / 9780199539864
Zustand	Neuware