[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 academic. And he is an editorial half of that famous dreadnought, Understanding Poetry, which was as responsible as any work for disseminating the New Criticism. [A Shaping Joy] is much concerned with the label as it represents both condemnation and legitimacy. Brooks sets out in his first two essays (their titles are revealing: "The Uses of Literature" and "The Modern Writer and his Community") to gainsay the accusation that the New Criticism is insular, impervious to anything beyond its own involvements. At the same time he insists on its basic soundness. Thus, while often enlightening us on familiar works, he does succeed in justifying close criticism and in answering charges of irresponsibility before our nuclear bomb age: the...