W. K. Wimsatt (1907–1975)
Author of The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry
About the Author
Wimsatt, Sterling Professor of English at Yale, where he taught for over 35 years, was one of the most important literary critics of his generation. He and Yale colleague Cleanth Brooks were arguably the key disseminators of the New Criticism, which was extremely influential from the 1940s through show more the 1960s. The basic tenets of New Criticism were outlined in England during the 1920s and 1930s by T. S. Eliot, William Empson, and I. A. Richards, and in America at about the same time by a group of southern writers, among them Cleanth Brooks. Wimsatt's 1954 collection of essays, The Verbal Icon, was one of the most important statements of New Critical methodology, and along with the works of Brooks, was frequently taught in college and university courses as New Criticism became the standard approach to literature, virtually synonymous with criticism itself. Two essays from the volume, coauthored with Monroe Beardsley, have provided particularly enduring catch phrases and key indicators of New Critical assumptions. "The Intentional Fallacy" describes what Wimsatt and Beardsley saw as an excessive emphasis on the author's psyche and self-expression at the expense of the work itself, so that the critic reduces the meaning of a text to the author's ostensible intentions, the feelings or ideas he or she meant it to convey (if these can even be discovered). "The Affective Fallacy" describes the opposite, the mistake of determining the meaning and success of a work by its emotional or didactic effect on the reader, again at the expense of a close reading of the text itself. For New Critics like Wimsatt, a work of literature should be a self-contained, organic whole to be understood and evaluated "objectively," as a linguistic structure apart from its production or consumption, according to formal and supposedly internal criteria, such as complexity, irony, and unity. To consider the feelings or ideas presumed to be expressed in a work or to result from reading it is, according to New Criticism, to be swayed by moral, philosophical, or sociological criteria external and therefore extraneous to the work. Many literary theorists now suggest that the objectivity and apoliticism for which formalist New Criticism strove is impossible and actually resulted in biased, politically conservative readings of literature. However, most contemporary critics still find close reading and explication of textual elements as crucial to the critical activity as the biographical, psychobiographical, historical, and ethico-philosophical studies whose importance they have renewed. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Works by W. K. Wimsatt
Associated Works
Nykyestetiikan ongelmia antologia 4 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Wimsatt, W. K.
- Legal name
- Wimsatt, William Kurtz, Jr.
- Birthdate
- 1907-11-17
- Date of death
- 1975-12-17
- Gender
- male
- Education
- Georgetown University (BA)
Yale University (Ph.D|1939) - Occupations
- critic
literary theorist
professor - Organizations
- Yale University
Modern Language Association - Awards and honors
- Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Washington, D.C., USA
- Places of residence
- New Haven, Connecticut, USA
- Place of death
- New Haven, Connecticut, USA
- Associated Place (for map)
- Connecticut, USA
Members
Reviews
How can this have an average rating of three paltry stars? It's so well-written and considered.
OK, OK, so I'm doing my time-dishonored 'review way before finished' thing, here, but -- Wimsatt and Brooks give great attention to Plato and Aristotle before moving on. The coverage and discussion, at least in what I have read, is truly fine.
OK, OK, so I'm doing my time-dishonored 'review way before finished' thing, here, but -- Wimsatt and Brooks give great attention to Plato and Aristotle before moving on. The coverage and discussion, at least in what I have read, is truly fine.
As a historical survey, going into some (and interesting) detail but not getting very bogged down, and beginning by going back to Plato and Aristotle, at first this "pushed my buttons." By the end (of this one volume), however, I found myself enjoying it less and less---probably, at least in part, because I don't think much of the way literature, criticism, and philosophy went from about the Renaissance on, but there was also some other subtle je ne sais quoi in the authors' perspective that show more didn't sit well with me.
In the end, I'm glad to have had the chance to read it, and wish that I could have done so during one of my college literature, history, or philosophy courses, but it'll be a long time before I read it again. show less
In the end, I'm glad to have had the chance to read it, and wish that I could have done so during one of my college literature, history, or philosophy courses, but it'll be a long time before I read it again. show less
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Statistics
- Works
- 20
- Also by
- 7
- Members
- 330
- Popularity
- #71,936
- Rating
- 3.9
- Reviews
- 2
- ISBNs
- 36