Cleanth Brooks Critical Essay | Critical Essay by W. H. Auden

Critical Essay by W. H. Auden

[Brooks's thesis in Modern Poetry and the Tradition] may be summed up as follows:

1. The Augustan neo-classicists regarded metaphor only as a decoration of thought. This is false. In poetry, idea and image are one.
2. The romantics ranked wit and fancy below imagination, intellect below emotion, and considered irony beneath their dignity. This is false. Wit and irony are essential elements in serious poetry.
3. Both regarded poetry as an elevated way of expressing elevated beliefs. This is false. The truth or error of beliefs expressed in poetry is immaterial; indeed great poetry can be written without any beliefs at all.
4. In returning to the metaphysical and ironic style of writing common in the seventeenth century, modern poets like Eliot, Yeats and Allen Tate are returning to the true tradition of En-Cleanth Brooks 1906– © Kelly Wiseglish poetry, from which the Augustans and...
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