Cleanth Brooks Summary

No less a historian of criticism than René Wellek has called Cleanth Brooks "the critic of critics." Both senses of the phrase are appropriate descriptions of Brooks. Not only was he considered... Read more

Critical Essay by W. H. Auden [Brooks's thesis in Modern Poetry and the Tradition] may be summed up as follows: The Augustan neo-classicists regarded metaphor only as a decoration of thought. ... Read more

Critical Essay by Earl Rovit [The Hidden God, a] casual discussion of the works of Hemingway, Faulkner, Yeats, Eliot, and Warren, is an attempt to indicate the religious relevance that these works may... Read more

Critical Essay by Theodore Weiss [Cleanth Brooks] comes close in many minds to being the New Critic. Having, unlike most of his peers, published little poetry and fiction, he is wholly a critic and an... Read more

Critical Essay by RenÉ Wellek Cleanth Brooks is usually identified with one method, "close reading," and with a search for such devices as paradox and irony in English poetry from... Read more

Critical Essay by Malcolm Cowley [William Faulkner: Toward Yoknapatawpha and Beyond] as a whole is less impressive than The Yoknapatawpha Country because its topics are more diverse and because most o... Read more

Critical Essay by R. P. Blackmur The title of ["The Well Wrought Urn"] is taken from Donne's "Canonisation," where "a well wrought urne" is said to bec... Read more

Critical Essay by Charles V. Hartung The long analysis of The Waste Land in Modern Poetry and the Tradition is a good example of Brooks' earlier [critical] method. As Brooks himself admits, the... Read more

Critical Essay by John Edward Hardy [Brooks regards] the use of language in at least his kind of critical writing as something essentially different from the poetic use. It is unlikely that he would b... Read more

Critical Essay by Reynolds Price [William Faulkner: The Yoknapatawpha Country is at once] the most courteous, modest, sensible and helpful of existing guides. For a guide is most nearly what it is, a ... Read more

In the following review, Daniel explains Brooks's theory of the evolution of poetic style. In keeping with the critical principles that underlie Understanding Poetry, Cleanth Brooks makes in Mo... Read more

Below, Beck and Rhoades compare Brooks's New Criticism and Stanley Fish's Reader-Response theory. The method of literary analysis which became known as the New Criticism began in meeting... Read more

Below, Daniel favorably reviews Brooks's William Faulkner: The Yoknapatawpha Country. Brooks's own southern heritage, Daniel argues, gives added clarity to his interpretations of Faulkne... Read more

In the following essay, Calhoun gives a concise history of the development of Formalistic Criticism, especially the New Criticism of Brooks and others. The formalist approach to poetry was the one mos... Read more

In the following review, Freer contrasts Historical Evidence and the Reading of Seventeenth-Century Poetry with earlier writings by Brooks, asserting that "one of the chief subjects of this boo... Read more

In the following excerpt, Lyday presents mixed opinions of Brooks's ideas. Cleanth Brooks's William Faulkner: The Yoknapatawpha Country (1963) and William Faulkner: Toward Yoknapatawpha ... Read more

[Mitgang is an American journalist, nonfiction writer, and critic. In the following obituary, he provides an overview of Brooks's life and career.] Cleanth Brooks, an educator, author and emine... Read more

[Spears is an American educator and critic. In the review below, he favorably assesses Brooks's The Language of the American South, noting his concern with the significance of language in the i... Read more

[Crews is an American educator and critic. In the following excerpt from an essay that surveys several recent volumes of Faulkner criticism, he assails Brooks's recent and past interpretations ... Read more

[Below, Hall favorably reviews Historical Evidence and the Reading of Seventeenth-Century Poetry and compares it to Brooks's earlier work The Well Wrought Urn.] Historical Evidence and the Read... Read more