William Empson: Prophet Against Sacrifice (Critics of the Twentieth Century)

195 Pages·1991·0.77 MB·English

by  Paul H. Fry

WILLIAM EMPSON
CRITICS OF THE WENTIETH CENTURY
General Editor: Christopher Norris,
University of Wales, College of Cardiff
A.J.GREIMAS AND THE NATURE OF MEANING
Ronald Schleifer
CHRISTOPHER CAUDWELL
Robert Sullivan
FIGURING LACAN
Criticism and the Cultural Unconscious
Juliet Flower MacCannell
HAROLD BLOOM
Towards Historical Rhetorics
Peter de Bolla
JULIA KRISTEVA
John Lechte
GEOFFREY HARTMAN
Criticism as Answerable Style
G.Douglas Atkins
INTRODUCING LYOTARD
Art and Politics
Bill Reading
EZRA POUND AS LITERARY CRITIC
K.K.Ruthven
F.R.LEAVIS
Michael Bell
DELEUZE AND GUATTARI
Ronald Bogue
POSTMODERN BRECHT
A Re-Presentation
Elizabeth Wright
THE ECSTASIES OF ROLAND BARTHES
Mary Bittner Wiseman
PAUL RICOEUR
S.H.Clark
JURGEN HABERMAS
Critic in the Public Sphere
Robert C.Holub
WILLIAM EMPSON

Prophet Against Sacrifice

Paul H.Fry

London and New York
First published 1991
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002.

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
a division of Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc.
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

© 1991 Paul H.Fry

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Fry, Paul H.
William Empson: prophet against sacrifice—(Critics of the
twentieth century).
1. English literature. Criticism. Empson, William 1906–1984
I. Title II. Series
820.9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fry, Paul H.
William Empson: prophet against sacrifice/Paul H.Fry.
p. cm. —(Critics of the twentieth century)
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Empson, William, 1906– —Knowledge—Literature. 2. English
literature—History and criticism—Theory, etc. 3. Criticism—Great
Britain—History—20th century. I. Title. II. Series: Critics of the
twentieth century (London, England)
PR6009.M7Z66 1991
801'.95'092—dc20 91–10018

ISBN 0–415–02482–X (Print edition)
ISBN 0–203–06925–0 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0–203–21898–1 (Glassbook Format)
For Spencer,
with love from his Dad

Contents

Editor’s foreword ix
Preface and acknowledgments xiii
Texts frequently cited xvii
1 Introduction: the scapegoat and the word 1
2 Satanic criticism: Empson and the Romantic tradition 29
3 Advancing logical disorder: Empson on method 55
4 Toward late Empson: the failure of pastoral 88
5 Middle Spirits and Empson’s chain of being 119
Notes 147
Index 169

Editor’s foreword

The twentieth century has produced a remarkable number of gifted
and innovative literary critics. Indeed it could be argued that some
of the finest literary minds of the age have turned to criticism as
the medium best adapted to their complex and speculative range of
interests. This has sometimes given rise to regret among those who
insist on a clear demarcation between “creative” (primary) writing
on the one hand, and “critical” (secondary) texts on the other. Yet
this distinction is far from self-evident. It is coming under strain at
the moment as novelists and poets grow increasingly aware of the
conventions that govern their writing and the challenge of
consciously ex-ploiting and subverting those conventions. And the
critics for their part—some of them at least—are beginning to question
their traditional role as humble servants of the literary text with no
further claim upon the reader’s interest or attention. Quite simply,
there are texts of literary criticism and theory that, for various
reasons— stylistic complexity, historical influence, range of
intellectual command—cannot be counted a mere appendage to those
other “primary” texts.
Of course, there is a logical puzzle here, since (it will be
argued) “literary criticism” would never have come into being,
and could hardly exist as such, were it not for the body of
creative writings that provide its raison d’être. But this is not quite
the kind of knockdown argument that it might appear at first
glance. For one thing, it conflates some very different orders of
priority, assuming that literature always comes first (in the sense
that Greek tragedy had to exist before Aristotle could formulate
its rules), so that literary texts are for that very reason possessed
of superior value. And this argument would seem to find
commonsense support in the difficulty of thinking what “literary
criticism” could be if it seriously renounced all sense of the
ix