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"This is an important anthology that challenges the assumption of a radical break between formalism and the criticism that followed it. Andrew DuBois's fine introductory essay usefully fills out the history of the New Criticism, while forcing a reconsideration of some currently widespread theoretical assumptions. The thoughtfully chosen essays anthologized in "Close Reading" persuasively demonstrate the continuities between formalist and post-formalist criticism and, at the same time, show students the value of close and critical reading."--Suzy Anger, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

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CLOSE READING

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

Preface.......................................................................................................................................ixIntroduction ANDREW DUBOIS...................................................................................................................1Poetry: A Note on Ontology JOHN CROWE RANSOM.................................................................................................43Keats's Sylvan Historian: History Without Footnotes CLEANTH BROOKS...........................................................................61Symbolic Action in a Poem by Keats KENNETH BURKE.............................................................................................72The Ekphrastic Principle and the Still Movement of Poetry; or Laokon Revisited MURRAY KRIEGER...............................................88Examples of Wallace Stevens R. P. BLACKMUR...................................................................................................111How to Do Things with Wallace Stevens FRANK LENTRICCHIA......................................................................................136Stevens and Keats's "To Autumn" HELEN VENDLER................................................................................................156"Lycidas": A Poem Finally Anonymous STANLEY FISH.............................................................................................175Literary History and Literary Modernity PAUL DE MAN..........................................................................................197Acts of Cultural Criticism ROLAND BARTHES....................................................................................................216Nostalgia for the Present FREDRIC JAMESON....................................................................................................226The Mousetrap CATHERINE GALLAGHER AND STEPHEN GREENBLATT.....................................................................................243Jane Austen's Cover Story (And Its Secret Agents) SANDRA GILBERT AND SUSAN GUBAR.............................................................272Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl EVE KOSOFSKY SEDGWICK..................................................................................301Ulysses and the Twentieth Century FRANCO MORETTI.............................................................................................321To Move Without Moving: An Analysis of Creativity and Commerce in Ralph Ellison's Trueblood Episode HOUSTON A. BAKER JR......................337The World and the Home HOMI BHABHA...........................................................................................................366Contributors..................................................................................................................................381Acknowledgment of Copyrights..................................................................................................................385Index.........................................................................................................................................387

Chapter One

John Crowe Ransom

A poetry may be distinguished from a poetry by virtue of subject-matter, and subject-matter may be differentiated with respect to its ontology, or the reality of its being. An excellent variety of critical doctrine arises recently out of this differentiation, and thus perhaps criticism leans again upon ontological analysis as it was meant to do by Kant. The recent critics remark in effect that some poetry deals with things, while some other poetry deals with ideas. The two poetries will differ from each other as radically as a thing differs from an idea.

The distinction in the hands of critics is a fruitful one. There is apt to go along with it a principle of valuation, which is the consequence of a temperament, and therefore basic. The critic likes things and intends that his poet shall offer them: or likes ideas and intends that he shall offer them: and approves him as he does the one or the other. Criticism cannot well go much deeper than this. The critic has carried to the last terms his analysis of the stuff of which poetry is made, and valued it frankly as his temperament or his need requires him to value it.

So philosophical a critic seems to be highly modern. He is; but this critic as a matter of fact is peculiarly on one side of the question. (The implication is unfavourable to the other side of the question.) He is in revolt against the tyranny of ideas, and against the poetry which celebrates ideas, and which may be identified-so far as his usual generalization may be trusted-with the hateful poetry of the Victorians. His bias is in favour of the things. On the other hand the critic who likes Victorian verse, or the poetry of ideas, has probably not thought of anything of so grand a simplicity as electing between the things and the ideas, being apparently not quite capable of the ontological distinction. Therefore he does not know the real or constitutional ground of his liking, and may somewhat ingenuously claim that his predilection is for those poets who give him inspiration, or comfort, or truth, or honest meters, or something else equally "worthwhile." But Plato, who was not a modern, was just as clear as we are about the basic distinction between the ideas and the things, and yet stands far apart from the aforesaid conscious modern in passionately preferring the ideas over the things. The weight of Plato's testimony would certainly fall on the side of the Victorians, though they may scarcely have thought of calling him as their witness. But this consideration need not conclude the hearing.

I. PHYSICAL POETRY

The poetry which deals with things was much in favour a few years ago with the resolute body of critics. And the critics affected the poets. If necessary, they became the poets, and triumphantly illustrated the new mode. The Imagists were important figures in the history of our poetry, and they were both theorists and creators. It was their intention to present things in their thinginess, or Dinge in their Dinglichkeit; and to such an extent had the public lost its sense of Dinglichkeit that their redirection was wholesome. What the public was inclined to seek in poetry was ideas, whether large ones or small ones, grand ones or pretty ones, certainly ideas to live by and die by, but what the Imagists identified with the stuff of poetry was, simply, things.

Their application of their own principle was sufficiently heroic, though they scarcely consented to be as extreme in the practice as in the theory. They had artistic talent, every one of the original group, and it was impossible that they should make of poetry so simple an exercise as in doctrine they seemed to think it was. Yet Miss Lowell wrote a poem on Thompson's Lunch Room, Grand Central Station; it is admirable if its intention is to show the whole reach of her courage. Its detail goes like this:

Jagged greenwhite bowls of pressed glass Rearing snow-peaks of chipped sugar Above the lighthouse-shaped castors Of gray pepper and gray-white salt.

For most of us as for the public idealist, with his "values," this is inconsequential. Unhappily it seems that the things as things do not necessarily interest...