Though Wilde mocked his pronouncements of sexual deviance, Swinburne quarried queer desire for a reinvention of the metaphysical tradition. Even … More
Tag: Empson
62. (John Donne)
Central to Donne’s intelligence is a legalistic capacity to contest claims to property: since so much of the world cannot … More
47. (Andrew Marvell)
Even Christopher Ricks, whose criticism is chary in its courtship of the political, feels that Marvell, in one of the … More
29. (Anne Bradstreet)
How nice, on a sunny morning, to roll away from Lawrence in disgust and find unexpected pleasure. Mistress Bradstreet takes … More
23. (William Empson)
Of his drafting and redrafting process, he explained: “the careless ease always goes in last.” The ease was his affectation, an affectation … More
19. (John Milton)
The wryly and slyly passionate William Empson in Some Versions of Pastoral, at the end of the chapter on Milton and … More
18. (Laurence Sterne)
Judge the bar to be set where you will, what follows is going to be worse than what I usually … More
6. (Ben Jonson)
My first thought was: how odd for Eliot, poet-critic who railed against the dissociation of sensibility, to write: “The immediate … More
1. (First Words)
The title of this blog is from R.P. Blackmur, who’s in my personal pantheon of nine or ten great twentieth-century literary … More
Critical Provisions 