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.

Person & Character

Empson was a charismatic personality, variously described as gruff, scornful, brusque, cold, and of immoderate appetites (sex and alcohol being the most obvious), partly because he was also a roundly paradoxical figure. He was a Communist deeply sympathetic to the cause of Maoist revolutionaries in China, but was brought up in the cavernous luxury of a rural estate in Yorkshire with all the attendant prerogatives of a member of the landed gentry. He was deeply hostile to Christianity and monotheistic religions quite generally, but took a deep and active interest in Buddhism, even developing some expertise in the evaluation and understanding of Buddhist sculpture. He was a scholar of singular imagination, erudition and insight specializing in the highly traditional domain of pre-modern English literature at the heart of the canon (Shakespeare, Milton, the Metaphysical Poets), but his work is marked by great humour, the indulgence of an eloquent and cavalier dismissiveness (reminiscent of Oscar Wilde's critical bon mots), and an astonishingly rich and varied erudition: hardly marks of the staid, conservative and solemn scholar of popular ridicule and private respect, poring over scholarly minutiae and ignorant of the world at large. He was esteemed the revolutionary forefather of modern literary criticism, but disavowed "theory" altogether and evinced a deep concern for distinctly psychological elements in literature: the emotions of desire and love, the sensibility and intentions of authors. He was often castigated for being brusque and cold, but indulged his sexual desires for men and women freely and without shame, and retained in his prose and criticism, an astonishing sensitivity, respect and interest in human life in all its variety and madness, one might say, a deeply humane sensibility. He was an intellectual and scholar who spent a good portion of his early years inhabiting the persona of an imperial adventurer (more a Richard Francis Burton than a C.S. Lewis). In short, Empson was as much a grand and exuberant personality as a refined, sophisticated, and erudite scholar; and it is precisely this great reckless energy for life, this willingness to throw his entire self into the interpretation and criticism of literature, that informs his critical work and serves to renew in the common reader a sense of the wholly and inalienably human investment in canonical literature: a sense of how Milton or Shakespeare or Donne can matter deeply to all and any of us.

Related Topics:
Communist - Maoist - Yorkshire - Landed gentry - Buddhism - English literature - Oscar Wilde - Richard Francis Burton - C.S. Lewis

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