西方文论原典导读

窦可阳

目录

  • 1 Lecture 1 Plato Ion
    • 1.1 Introduction
    • 1.2 Presentation
    • 1.3 Discussion
    • 1.4 Comment
    • 1.5 Quiz
  • 2 Lecture 2 Aristotle Poetics
    • 2.1 Introduction
    • 2.2 Presentation
    • 2.3 Discussion
    • 2.4 Comment
    • 2.5 Quiz
  • 3 Lecture 3 Samuel Johnson Preface to the Plays of Shakespeare
    • 3.1 Introduction
    • 3.2 Presentation
    • 3.3 Discussion
    • 3.4 Comment
    • 3.5 Quiz
  • 4 Lecture 4 Wordsworth Preface to Lyrical Ballads (2nd Edition)
    • 4.1 Introduction
    • 4.2 Presentation
    • 4.3 Discussion
    • 4.4 Comment
    • 4.5 Quiz
  • 5 Lecture 5 Taine Preface to History of English Literature
    • 5.1 Introduction
    • 5.2 Presentation
    • 5.3 Discussion
    • 5.4 Comment
    • 5.5 Quiz
  • 6 Lecture 6 Oscar Wilde Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray
    • 6.1 Introduction
    • 6.2 Presentation
    • 6.3 Discussion
    • 6.4 Comment
    • 6.5 Quiz
  • 7 Lecture 7 Freud Development of the Libido and Sexual Organization
    • 7.1 Introduction
    • 7.2 Presentation
    • 7.3 Discussion
    • 7.4 Comment
    • 7.5 Quiz
  • 8 Lecture 8 Eliot Tradition and the Individual Talent
    • 8.1 Introduction
    • 8.2 Presentation
    • 8.3 Discussion
    • 8.4 Comment
    • 8.5 Quiz
  • 9 Lecture 9 Empson Seven Types Of Ambiguity
    • 9.1 Introduction
    • 9.2 Presentation
    • 9.3 Discussion
    • 9.4 Comment
    • 9.5 Quiz
  • 10 Lecture 10 Bakhtin Epic and Novel
    • 10.1 Introduction
    • 10.2 Presentation
    • 10.3 Discussion
    • 10.4 Comment
    • 10.5 Quiz
  • 11 Lecture 11 M. H. Abrams The Mirror and the Lamp
    • 11.1 Introduction
    • 11.2 Presentation
    • 11.3 Discussion
    • 11.4 Comment
    • 11.5 Quiz
  • 12 Lecture 12 Sontag Against Interpretation
    • 12.1 Introduction
    • 12.2 Presentation
    • 12.3 Discussion
    • 12.4 Comment
    • 12.5 Quiz
  • 13 Lecture 13 H. Jauss Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory
    • 13.1 Introduction
    • 13.2 Presentation
    • 13.3 Discussion
    • 13.4 Comment
    • 13.5 Quiz
  • 14 Lecture 14 Edward Said Orientalism
    • 14.1 Introduction
    • 14.2 Discussion
    • 14.3 Comment
    • 14.4 Quiz
Presentation

·life

Sir WilliamEmpson was an English literary critic and poet, widely influential for hispractice of closely reading literary works, a practice fundamental to NewCriticism. His best-known work is his first, Seven Types of Ambiguity,published in 1930.

Jonathan Bate has written that the three greatest Englishliterary critics of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries are Johnson, Hazlitt andEmpson, "not least because they are the funniest".

After hisbanishment from Cambridge Empson supported himself for a brief period as afreelance critic and journalist, living in Bloomsbury until 1930, when hesigned a three-year contract to teach in Japan after his tutor Richards hadfailed to find him a post teaching in China. He returned to England in themid-1930s only to depart again after receiving a three-year contract to teachat Peking University. Upon his arrival he discovered that, because of theJapanese invasion of China, he no longer had a post. He joined the exodus ofthe university's staff, with little more than a typewriter and a suitcase, andended up in Kunming, with Lianda (Southwest Associated University), the schoolcreated there by students and professors who were refugees from the war in theNorth. He arrived back in England in January 1939.

He workedfor a year on the daily Digest of foreign broadcasts and in 1941 met GeorgeOrwell, at that time the Indian Editor of the BBC Eastern Service, on asix-week course at what was called the Liars' School of the BBC. They remainedfriends, but Empson recalled one clash: "At that time the Government hadput into action a scheme for keeping up the birth-rate during the war by makingit in various ways convenient to have babies, for mothers going out to work;government nurseries were available after the first month, I think, and therewere extra eggs and other goodies on the rations. My wife and I took advantage ofthis plan to have two children. I was saying to George one evening after dinnerwhat a pleasure it was to cooperate with so enlightened a plan when, to myhorror, I saw the familiar look of settled loathing come over his face. Richswine boasting over our privileges, that was what we had become ...".

Just afterthe war Empson returned to China. He taught at Peking University, befriending ayoung David Hawkes, who later became a noted sinologist and chair of Chinese atOxford University. Then, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, he taught a summercourse for the intensive study of literature at the Kenyon School of English atKenyon College in Ohio. According to Newsweek, "The roster of instructorswas enough to pop the eyes of any major in English." In addition to Empsonthe faculty included Robert Penn Warren, John Crowe Ransom, Robert Lowell,Delmore Schwartz, Jacques Barzun, Eric Bentley, Cleanth Brooks, Alfred Kazin,Arthur Mizener, Allen Tate and Yvor Winters.[citation needed

In 1953 Empson was Professor of Rhetoric at GreshamCollege, London, for a year. He then became head of the English Department atthe University of Sheffield until his retirement in 1972. He was knighted in1979, the same year his old college, Magdalene, awarded him an honorary fellowshipsome 50 years after his expulsion.