Cleanth Brooks

American literary critic and academic

Cleanth Brooks KLEE-anth (October 16, 1906 – May 10, 1994) was an American literary critic and teacher.

Cleanth Brooks
Born(1906-10-16)October 16, 1906
DiedMay 10, 1994(1994-05-10) (aged 87)
EducationMcTyeire School
Vanderbilt University
Tulane University
Exeter College, Oxford
Occupation(s)Literary critic, academic
SpouseEdith Amy Blanchord

Brooks was born in Murray, Kentucky. He went to college at Vanderbilt University and Tulane University. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University.[1]

He wrote Understanding Poetry in 1938 with poet Robert Penn Warren. This helped to begin a way of looking at literature that is called "The New Criticism." He taught at Yale University from 1946 until 1975.[1]

Books change

  • 1936. An Approach to Literature
  • 1938. Understanding Poetry
  • 1939. Modern Poetry and the Tradition
  • 1943. Understanding Fiction
  • 1947. The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry
  • 1957. Literary Criticism: A Short History
  • 1963. William Faulkner: The Yoknapatawpha Country
  • 1964. The Hidden God: Studies in Hemingway, Faulkner, Yeats, Eliot, and Warren
  • 1971. A Shaping Joy: Studies in the Writer's Craft
  • 1973. American Literature: The Makers and the Making
  • 1978. William Faulkner: Toward Yoknapatawpha and Beyond
  • 1983. William Faulkner: First Encounters
  • 1985. The Language of the American South
  • 1991. Historical Evidence and the Reading of Seventeenth-Century Poetry

References change

  1. 1.0 1.1 Mitgang, Herbert (1994-05-12). "Cleanth Brooks, Yale Professor And Prominent New Critic, 87". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-03-25.