SOURCE: Pole, David. “Cleanth Brooks and the New Criticism.” British Journal of Aesthetics 9, no. 3 (July 1969): 285-97.

In the following essay, Pole surveys Brooks's work on critical interpretation of poetry.

There are two reasons that might serve as justifying the close study of a particular thinker; either his weight and importance in himself or the width of his influence on others. And both, I suggest, are relevant to some special examination of the critical theorizing of Mr. Cleanth Brooks. Brooks has been ungenerously characterized—I recall seeing the phrase somewhere—as a man with a keen nose for a fashionable idea—which is, if you like, true enough. But, I think, the same point might have been put rather differently: his work incorporates and sums up a large tradition, indeed, sum it up and sets it forth systematically; he also quotes and carefully answers his several critics. Brooks, in...