Cleanth Brooks
(1906-1994)
American literary critic and professor
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Cleanth Brooks ( KLEE-anth; October 16, 1906 – May 10, 1994) was an American literary critic and professor. He is best known for his contributions to New Criticism in the mid-20th century and for revolutionizing the teaching of poetry in American higher education. His best-known works, The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry (1947) and Modern Poetry and the Tradition (1939), argue for the centrality of ambiguity and paradox as a way of understanding poetry. With his writing, Brooks helped to formulate formalist criticism, emphasizing "the interior life of a poem" (Leitch 2001) and codifying the principles of close reading.
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| Born |
16 October 1906 Murray, Kentucky
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| Died |
10 May 1994 (aged 87)
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| Zodiac | Libra |
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