William Empson

Sir William Empson (1906-1984) was an English poet and literary critic, and former head of the English department at the University of Sheffield, sometimes reckoned the greatest English literary critic after Samuel Johnson and William Hazlitt and fitting heir to their mode of witty, fiercely heterodox and imaginatively rich criticism. Jonathan Bate has remarked that the three greatest English Literary critics of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries are, respectively, Johnson, Hazlitt and Empson, "not least because they are the funniest" - and, indeed, in the critical climate of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, when much scholarly activity appears rigorously controlled by doctrinnaire philosophical and critical ideologies, Empson's work is refreshing in its humanity, imagination, wit, and freestyle erudition. The scholar and critic Harold Bloom has suggested that the appropriate apprehension of literary criticism would be one that recognized it as a mode of wisdom literature: Empson's critical stance is, perhaps, best appreciated in this light.

Influence & Importance

Empson is today best known for his literary criticism, and in particular his analysis of the use of language in poetical works: his own poetry is arguably undervalued, although it was admired by and influenced English poets in the 1950s. In his critical work he was particularly influenced by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose own work is largely concerned with the problematics of language in expressing thought. His best known work is the book Seven Types of Ambiguity, which, together with Some Versions of Pastoral and The Structure of Complex Words, mine the astonishing riches of linguistic ambiguity in English poetic literature unearthing layer upon layer of irony, suggestion and argument in various literary works - a technique of textual criticism so influential that often the determinate contributions of Empson to certain domains of literary scholarship remain significant, though they may no longer be recognized as his. To take one example, the universal recognition of the inherent and suggestive difficulty and complexity (indeed, ambiguity) of Shakespeare's Sonnet 94 ("They that have power...") in light of the preceding and following Sonnets is traceable to Empson's sophisticated and detailed analysis of the Sonnet in Some Versions of Pastoral - a virtuosic display of the riches a singular and brilliant sensibility might unearth from a close reading of poem - and goes some way towards explaining the high-esteem in which the Sonnet is now held (often being reckoned as among the finest sonnets in the collection) as well as the technique of criticism and interpretation that has reckoned it thus.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Seven Types of Ambiguity was to have a significant impact on the New Criticism, a school of criticism which directed particular attention to close reading of texts, among whose adherents may be numbered F.R. Leavis, although Empson could scarcely be described as an adherent or exponent of such a school or, indeed, of any critical school at all (anymore than Johnson could be). Empson consistently ridiculed, both outrightly in words and implicitly in practice, the doctrine of the Intentional Fallacy formulated by William K. Wimsatt, an influential New Critic, indeed, both the title and content of one of Empson's volumes of critical papers, Using Biography, show a patent and polemical disregard for the teachings of New Critics as much as for those of Roland Barthes and postmodern literary theories predicated upon, if not merely influenced by, the notion of the Death of the Author. Empson's distaste for "postmodern" modes of criticism could manifest itself in a dismissive and brusque wit: Sir Frank Kermode remarks that

Related Topics:
New Criticism - Close reading - F.R. Leavis - Johnson - Intentional Fallacy - William K. Wimsatt - Roland Barthes - Postmodern - The Death of the Author - Sir Frank Kermode

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Now and again somebody like Christopher Norris may, in a pious moment, attempt

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

to "recuperate" a particularly brilliant old-style reputation by claiming its owner as

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

a New New Critic avant la lettre - Empson in this case, now to be thought

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

of as having, in his "great theoretical summa," The Structure of Complex Words,

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

anticipated deconstruction. The grumpy old man repudiated this notion with his

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

habitual scorn, calling the work of Derrida (or, as he preferred to call

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

him, "Nerrida") "very disgusting"... (Kermode, Pleasure, Change, and the Canon)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~