SOURCE: "Well Wrought Facts," in The Sewanee Review, Vol. C, No. 2, Spring, 1992, pp. xxxviii-xli.

[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 Reading of Seventeenth-Century Poetry will be especially rewarding, as the title suggests, for readers interested in the good minor poetry of the seventeenth century. Some familiarity with the poets collected by H. J. C. Grierson and Geoffrey Bullough in their once standard Oxford Book of Seventeenth-Century Verse (1934), a book earlier generations of English doctoral students studied in preparation for oral qualifying examinations, would be helpful, but is not essential. The more general sort of educated readers will be happy to learn, however, that with Historical Evidence Cleanth Brooks also continues his lifelong project of teaching us how to read, understand, and appreciate literature.

Most obviously Historical Evidence...