Revised twice since it first appeared, it has remained one of the most widely read and quoted works of literary analysis.Ambiguity, according to Empson, includes "any verbal nuance, however slight, w
Fifty-six poems, including "Chinese Ballad" and "A Masque (The Birth of Steel)." "The wrung-out, colloquial dryness of this diction has its own firm music, capable of being heightened, in more elabor
This collection of William Empson's essays on Elizabethan and Jacobean drama is the second volume of his writings on Renaissance literature. Edited with an introduction by the leading Empson scholar John Haffenden, the contents range from famous essays on The Spanish Tragedy, Volpone, The Alchemist and The Duchess of Malfi to a sprightly piece on Elizabethan spirits. In addition, there are previously unpublished essays which revisit critical controversies, and a magnificent, provocative study of A Midsummer Night's Dream which ventures a major new reading of the play. 'I am attracted by the notion of a hearty indifference to one's own and other people's feelings, when a fragment of the truth is in question,' Empson stated. The incomparable Empson here fights his own critical corner with unequalled zest, intelligence and insight.
Mr. Empson sees the pastoral convention as including not only poems of shepherd life but any work "about the people but not by or for" them. Finding examples in the writing of every country and centur
Passionate, controversial and illuminating - this collection contains Empson's best short pieces on Shakespeare, a sally on George Herbert, a defence of Coleridge, and an eager introduction to a Frenc
Taking up a teaching appointment in Tokyo in 1931, the English poet and literary critic William Empson found himself captivated by the Buddhist sculptures of ancient Japan, and spent the years that fo
With an introduction by W.H. Auden and commentary from Helen Vendler, among others, this volume presents all of Shakeseare's non-dramatic poetry in one place.
The poems and poem fragments selected by Epson and Pirie represent the very best of Coleridges work. Many of Coleridge's poems are astounding successes, but for everyone of these there are also abys