Misplaced Pages

Christopher Ricks: Difference between revisions

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
Browse history interactively← Previous editContent deleted Content addedVisualWikitext
Revision as of 16:42, 4 March 2017 edit131.111.185.12 (talk)No edit summary← Previous edit Latest revision as of 22:17, 26 July 2024 edit undoRegulov (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users26,173 editsmNo edit summary 
(35 intermediate revisions by 28 users not shown)
Line 1: Line 1:
{{short description|British literary critic and scholar (born 1933)}}
{{EngvarB|date=August 2014}} {{EngvarB|date=August 2014}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2014}} {{Use dmy dates|date=August 2014}}

⚫ '''Sir Christopher Bruce Ricks''', ] (born 18 September 1933)<ref>Nicholas Wroe: "Bringing it all back home" ], Saturday 29 January 2005 </ref> is a British (although he lives in the US) ] and scholar. He is the William M. and Sara B. Warren Professor of the Humanities at ] (US) and Co-Director of the ] at ], and was ] at the ] (UK) from 2004 to 2009. He is the immediate past-president of the ].
{{Infobox writer
⚫ He is known as a champion of ]; an enthusiast of ], whose lyrics he has analysed at book length;<ref>Michael Gray (2006), ''The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia'', p. 571.</ref> a trenchant reviewer<ref>A collection is in ''Reviewery''.</ref> of writers he considers pretentious (], ], ], ]); and a warm reviewer of those he thinks humane or humorous (], ], ]). ] praised his "intent eloquence",<ref>], ''A Sinking Island: The Modern English Writers,'' Knopf, New York 1988, p.245</ref> and ] his "unrivalled critical intelligence".<ref>], ''Collected Critical Writings'', OUP, Oxford 2008, p.379</ref> ] described Ricks as "exactly the kind of critic every poet dreams of finding".<ref>"Oxford Book of English Verse", ed. Ricks, OUP 1999</ref> ] calls him the "greatest living critic".<ref>.</ref>
| name = Christopher Bruce Ricks
| embed =
| honorific_prefix = Sir
| honorific_suffix = ]
| image =
| image_size =
| image_upright =
| alt =
| caption =
| native_name =
| native_name_lang =
| pseudonym =
| birth_name =
| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1933|9|18|df=yes}}
| birth_place = ], ]
| occupation = Critic, scholar, professor
| language =
| nationality = British
| citizenship =
| education =
| alma_mater = ]
| period =
| genre = Literary criticism
| subject = <!-- or: | subjects = -->
| movement =
| notableworks = <!-- or: | notablework = -->
| spouse = <!-- or: | spouses = -->
| partner = <!-- or: | partners = -->
| children =
| relatives =
| awards = 2003 Mellon Distinguished Achievement Award
| signature =
| signature_alt =
| years_active =
| module =
| website = <!-- {{URL|example.org}} -->
| portaldisp = <!-- "on", "yes", "true", etc; or omit -->
}}
⚫ '''Sir Christopher Bruce Ricks''' {{Post-nominals|country=UK|FBA}} (born 18 September 1933)<ref>{{Cite news |last=Wroe |first=Nicholas |date=2005-01-29 |title=Bringing it all back home |language=en-GB |work=The Guardian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/jan/29/poetry.oxforduniversity |access-date=2023-09-08 |issn=0261-3077}}</ref> is a British ] and scholar. He is the William M. and Sara B. Warren Professor of the Humanities at ] (US), co-director of the ] at ], and was ] at the ] (UK) from 2004 to 2009. In 2008, he served as president of the ].
⚫ He is known as a champion of ]; an enthusiast of ], whose lyrics he has analysed at book length;<ref>Michael Gray (2006), ''The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia'', p. 571.</ref> a trenchant reviewer<ref>A collection is in ''Reviewery''.</ref> of writers he considers pretentious (], ], ], ]); and a warm reviewer of those he thinks humane or humorous (], ], ]). ] praised his "intent eloquence",<ref>], ''A Sinking Island: The Modern English Writers'', Knopf, New York 1988, p. 245</ref> and ] his "unrivalled critical intelligence".<ref>], ''Collected Critical Writings'', OUP, Oxford 2008, p. 379</ref> ] described Ricks as "exactly the kind of critic every poet dreams of finding".<ref>''Oxford Book of English Verse'', ed. Ricks, OUP 1999</ref> ] calls him the "greatest living critic".<ref>{{Cite web |date= |title=John Carey in conversation with Clive James |url=http://www.clivejames.com/carey |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120119101124/http://www.clivejames.com/carey |archive-date=2012-01-19 |access-date=2023-09-08 |website=clivejames.com}}</ref>


==Life== ==Life==
He was born in ] and studied at ], where he graduated with a ] in English. He served in the ] in the ] in 1953/4 in ]. He was a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at ], moving in 1968, after a ] at ], to become Professor of English at the ]. He was born in ], the younger son of James Bruce Ricks, who worked for the family overcoat manufacturing firm, and Gabrielle (née Roszak), daughter of a furrier of French origin.<ref>''The International Who's Who 1996-97''. Europa Publications, 1996; p. 1298</ref><ref>''Contemporary Literary Critics'', Elmer Borklund, Palgrave Macmillan, 1977, p. 445</ref><ref name="auto1">{{Cite web|url=http://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/jan/29/poetry.oxforduniversity|title=Profile: Christopher Ricks|date=29 January 2005|website=The Guardian}}</ref> Ricks was educated at ]<ref name="auto">Contemporary Literary Critics, Elmer Borklund, Palgrave Macmillan, 1977, p. 445</ref> (a near-contemporary of the jockey ]), then – as the first of his family to attend university<ref name="auto1"/> – studied at ], where he graduated with a ] in his ] in English in 1956, a ] in 1958, and ] in 1960.<ref name="auto"/> He served in the ] in the ] in 1953/4 in ]. He was a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at ], moving in 1968, after a ] at ], to become Professor of English at the ].


During his time at Bristol he worked on ''] and Embarrassment'' (1974), in which he made revelatory connections between the letters and the poetry. It was also at Bristol that he first published his still-definitive edition of ]'s poetry. In 1975, Ricks moved to the ], where in 1982 he became ] in succession to ], before leaving for ] in 1986. In June 2011 it was announced he would join the professoriate of ], a private college in London.<ref>, New College of the Humanities, accessed 8 June 2011.</ref> During his time at Bristol he worked on ''] and Embarrassment'' (1974), in which he made revelatory connections between the letters and the poetry. It was also at Bristol that he first published his still-definitive edition of ]'s poetry. In 1975, Ricks moved to the ], where in 1982 he became ] in succession to ], before leaving for ] in 1986. In June 2011 it was announced he would join the professoriate of ], a private college in ].<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130511155511/http://www.nchum.org/faculty/professor-sir-christopher-ricks |date=11 May 2013 }}, New College of the Humanities, accessed 8 June 2011.</ref>


He was ] in the 2009 ].<ref>{{London Gazette |issue=59090 |date=13 June 2009 |startpage=1 |supp=yes }}</ref> He was ] in the 2009 ].<ref>{{London Gazette |issue=59090 |date=13 June 2009 |page=1 |supp=y}}</ref>


== Principles against theory == == Principles against theory ==
Line 15: Line 56:
Ricks has distinguished himself as a vigorous upholder of traditional principles of reading based on ]. He has opposed the theory-driven ] of the ] and ]. This places him outside the post-] ], to which he prefers the ] principle. Ricks has distinguished himself as a vigorous upholder of traditional principles of reading based on ]. He has opposed the theory-driven ] of the ] and ]. This places him outside the post-] ], to which he prefers the ] principle.


In an important essay,<ref>"Literary Principles as against theory", in Christopher Ricks, ''Essays in Appreciation'', Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1996, pp. 311–332, p. 312.</ref> he contrasts principles derived empirically from a close parsing of texts, a tradition whose great exemplar was Dr. Johnson, to the fashionable mode for philosophical critique that ] the "rhetorical" figures of a text and, in doing so, unwittingly disposes of the values and principles underlying the art of criticism itself. "Literature", he argues, "is, among other things, principled rhetoric". The intellectualist bias of professional theorists cannot but make their strenuously philosophical readings of literary texts discontinuous with the subject matter. In an important essay,<ref>"Literary Principles as against theory", in Christopher Ricks, ''Essays in Appreciation'', Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1996, pp. 311–332, p. 312.</ref> he contrasts principles derived empirically from a close parsing of texts, a tradition whose great exemplar was Samuel Johnson, to the fashionable mode for philosophical critique that ] the "rhetorical" figures of a text and, in doing so, unwittingly disposes of the values and principles underlying the art of criticism itself. "Literature", he argues, "is, among other things, principled rhetoric". The intellectualist bias of professional theorists cannot but make their strenuously philosophical readings of literary texts discontinuous with the subject matter.


Practical criticism is attuned to both the text and the reader's own sensibility, and thus engages in a nuanced dialogue between the complex discursive resonances of words in any literary work and the reader's correlative sentiments as they have been informed by a long experience of the self within both the world and literature. In this subtle negotiation between the value-thick sensibility of the reader and the intertextual resonances of a literary work lies the tactful attunement of all great criticism. This school of criticism must remain leery of critical practices that come to the text brandishing categorical, schematic assumptions, any panoply of tacitly assumed precepts external to the practical nature of literary creativity. Otherwise, the risk is one of a theoretical '']'', of a specious detachment that assumes a certain critical superiority to the text and its author. Those theory-saturated critics who engage with texts that, by their nature, are compact of social and political judgements (and much more), assert covertly a privileged innocence, an innocence denied to the text under scrutiny, whose rhetorical biases, and ] fault-lines are relentlessly subjected to ostensible "exposure". Practical criticism is attuned to both the text and the reader's own sensibility, and thus engages in a dialogue between the complex discursive resonances of words in any literary work and the reader's correlative sentiments as they have been informed by a long experience of the self within both the world and literature. In this subtle negotiation between the value-thick sensibility of the reader and the intertextual resonances of a literary work lies the tactful attunement of all great criticism. This school of criticism must remain leery of critical practices that come to the text brandishing categorical, schematic assumptions, any panoply of tacitly assumed precepts external to the practical nature of literary creativity. Otherwise, the risk is one of a theoretical '']'', of a specious detachment that assumes a certain critical superiority to the text and its author. Those theory-saturated critics who engage with texts that, by their nature, are compact of social and political judgements (and much more), assert covertly a privileged innocence, an innocence denied to the text under scrutiny, whose rhetorical biases, and ] fault-lines are relentlessly subjected to ostensible "exposure".


==Works== ==Works==
*''A Dissertation Upon English Typographical Founders and Founderies 1778 by ]'' (1961) editor with Harry Carter *''A Dissertation Upon English Typographical Founders and Founderies 1778 by ]'' (1961) editor with ]
*'']'s Grand Style'' (1963) *'']'s Grand Style'' (1963)
*''Poems and Critics'' (1966) anthology *''Poems and Critics'' (1966) anthology
Line 51: Line 92:
*''Reviewery'' (2003) essays *''Reviewery'' (2003) essays
*'']'' (2003) *'']'' (2003)
*''Decisions And Revisions In ]'' (2003) *''Decisions and Revisions in T. S. Eliot'' (2003)
*'']: Selected Poems'' (2005) editor *'']: Selected Poems'' (2005) editor
*'' True Friendship: Geoffrey Hill, Anthony Hecht and Robert Lowell Under the Sign of Eliot and Pound'' (2010) *'' True Friendship: Geoffrey Hill, Anthony Hecht and Robert Lowell Under the Sign of Eliot and Pound'' (2010)
*'' The Poems of T. S. Eliot'' (2015) editor with Jim McCue, 2 volumes
<!-- *'' The Complete Poems of T.S Eliot'' (2011) Co-editor with Jim McCue<ref></ref><ref></ref> -->
*'' Along Heroic Lines'' (2021)


==Footnotes== ==Footnotes==
Line 62: Line 104:
* *
* at ] * at ]
* Appearance on WMBR's '''' radio show 13 October 2004 * Appearance on WMBR's '' {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110504000207/http://web.mit.edu/echemi/www/index.html |date=4 May 2011 }}'' radio show 13 October 2004
*


{{Authority control}} {{Authority control}}
Line 69: Line 112:
] ]
] ]
]
] ]
] ]
Line 81: Line 123:
] ]
] ]
]
]

Latest revision as of 22:17, 26 July 2024

British literary critic and scholar (born 1933)

Sir
Christopher Bruce Ricks
FBA
Born (1933-09-18) 18 September 1933 (age 91)
Beckenham, United Kingdom
OccupationCritic, scholar, professor
NationalityBritish
Alma materBalliol College, Oxford
GenreLiterary criticism
Notable awards2003 Mellon Distinguished Achievement Award

Sir Christopher Bruce Ricks FBA (born 18 September 1933) is a British literary critic and scholar. He is the William M. and Sara B. Warren Professor of the Humanities at Boston University (US), co-director of the Editorial Institute at Boston University, and was Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford (UK) from 2004 to 2009. In 2008, he served as president of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics. He is known as a champion of Victorian poetry; an enthusiast of Bob Dylan, whose lyrics he has analysed at book length; a trenchant reviewer of writers he considers pretentious (Marshall McLuhan, Christopher Norris, Geoffrey Hartman, Stanley Fish); and a warm reviewer of those he thinks humane or humorous (F. R. Leavis, W. K. Wimsatt, Christina Stead). Hugh Kenner praised his "intent eloquence", and Geoffrey Hill his "unrivalled critical intelligence". W. H. Auden described Ricks as "exactly the kind of critic every poet dreams of finding". John Carey calls him the "greatest living critic".

Life

He was born in Beckenham, the younger son of James Bruce Ricks, who worked for the family overcoat manufacturing firm, and Gabrielle (née Roszak), daughter of a furrier of French origin. Ricks was educated at King Alfred's School, Wantage (a near-contemporary of the jockey Lester Piggott), then – as the first of his family to attend university – studied at Balliol College, Oxford, where he graduated with a first in his B.A. in English in 1956, a B.Litt. in 1958, and M.A. in 1960. He served in the Green Howards in the British Army in 1953/4 in Egypt. He was a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Worcester College, Oxford, moving in 1968, after a sabbatical year at Stanford University, to become Professor of English at the University of Bristol.

During his time at Bristol he worked on Keats and Embarrassment (1974), in which he made revelatory connections between the letters and the poetry. It was also at Bristol that he first published his still-definitive edition of Tennyson's poetry. In 1975, Ricks moved to the University of Cambridge, where in 1982 he became King Edward VII Professor of English Literature in succession to Frank Kermode, before leaving for Boston University in 1986. In June 2011 it was announced he would join the professoriate of New College of the Humanities, a private college in London.

He was knighted in the 2009 Birthday Honours.

Principles against theory

Ricks has distinguished himself as a vigorous upholder of traditional principles of reading based on practical criticism. He has opposed the theory-driven hermeneutics of the post-structuralist and postmodernist. This places him outside the post-New Critical literary theory, to which he prefers the Johnsonian principle.

In an important essay, he contrasts principles derived empirically from a close parsing of texts, a tradition whose great exemplar was Samuel Johnson, to the fashionable mode for philosophical critique that deconstructs the "rhetorical" figures of a text and, in doing so, unwittingly disposes of the values and principles underlying the art of criticism itself. "Literature", he argues, "is, among other things, principled rhetoric". The intellectualist bias of professional theorists cannot but make their strenuously philosophical readings of literary texts discontinuous with the subject matter.

Practical criticism is attuned to both the text and the reader's own sensibility, and thus engages in a dialogue between the complex discursive resonances of words in any literary work and the reader's correlative sentiments as they have been informed by a long experience of the self within both the world and literature. In this subtle negotiation between the value-thick sensibility of the reader and the intertextual resonances of a literary work lies the tactful attunement of all great criticism. This school of criticism must remain leery of critical practices that come to the text brandishing categorical, schematic assumptions, any panoply of tacitly assumed precepts external to the practical nature of literary creativity. Otherwise, the risk is one of a theoretical hybris, of a specious detachment that assumes a certain critical superiority to the text and its author. Those theory-saturated critics who engage with texts that, by their nature, are compact of social and political judgements (and much more), assert covertly a privileged innocence, an innocence denied to the text under scrutiny, whose rhetorical biases, and epistemological fault-lines are relentlessly subjected to ostensible "exposure".

Works

  • A Dissertation Upon English Typographical Founders and Founderies 1778 by Edward Rowe Mores (1961) editor with Harry Carter
  • Milton's Grand Style (1963)
  • Poems and Critics (1966) anthology
  • The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne (1967) editor with Graham Petrie
  • Twentieth Century Views: A. E. Housman (1968) editor
  • Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained by John Milton (1968) editor
  • English Poetry and Prose 1540–1674 (1970) editor
  • English Drama To 1710 (1971) editor
  • The Brownings: Letters and Poetry (1970) editor
  • Tennyson (1972)
  • A Collection of Poems By Alfred Tennyson (1972) editor
  • Selected Criticism of Matthew Arnold (1972) editor
  • Keats and Embarrassment (1974)
  • Geoffrey Hill and the Tongue's Atrocities (1978)
  • The State of the Language (1979) editor with Leonard Michaels, later edition 1990
  • The Force of Poetry (1984) essays
  • The Poems of Tennyson (1987) three volumes, editor
  • The Tennyson Archive (from 1987) editor with Aidan Day, 31 volumes
  • The New Oxford Book of Victorian Verse (1987) editor
  • T. S. Eliot and Prejudice (1988)
  • A. E. Housman: Collected Poems and Selected Prose (1988) editor
  • The Faber Book of America (1992) editor with William L. Vance
  • The Golden Treasury (1991) editor
  • Beckett's Dying Words (1993)
  • Essays in Appreciation (1996)
  • Inventions of the March Hare: Poems, 1909–1917 by T. S. Eliot (1996) editor
  • The Oxford Book of English Verse (1999) editor
  • Allusion to the Poets (2002)
  • Selected Poems of James Henry (2002) editor
  • Reviewery (2003) essays
  • Dylan's Visions of Sin (2003)
  • Decisions and Revisions in T. S. Eliot (2003)
  • Samuel Menashe: Selected Poems (2005) editor
  • True Friendship: Geoffrey Hill, Anthony Hecht and Robert Lowell Under the Sign of Eliot and Pound (2010)
  • The Poems of T. S. Eliot (2015) editor with Jim McCue, 2 volumes
  • Along Heroic Lines (2021)

Footnotes

  1. Wroe, Nicholas (29 January 2005). "Bringing it all back home". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 8 September 2023.
  2. Michael Gray (2006), The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, p. 571.
  3. A collection is in Reviewery.
  4. Hugh Kenner, A Sinking Island: The Modern English Writers, Knopf, New York 1988, p. 245
  5. Geoffrey Hill, Collected Critical Writings, OUP, Oxford 2008, p. 379
  6. Oxford Book of English Verse, ed. Ricks, OUP 1999
  7. "John Carey in conversation with Clive James". clivejames.com. Archived from the original on 19 January 2012. Retrieved 8 September 2023.
  8. The International Who's Who 1996-97. Europa Publications, 1996; p. 1298
  9. Contemporary Literary Critics, Elmer Borklund, Palgrave Macmillan, 1977, p. 445
  10. ^ "Profile: Christopher Ricks". The Guardian. 29 January 2005.
  11. ^ Contemporary Literary Critics, Elmer Borklund, Palgrave Macmillan, 1977, p. 445
  12. "The professoriate" Archived 11 May 2013 at the Wayback Machine, New College of the Humanities, accessed 8 June 2011.
  13. "No. 59090". The London Gazette (Supplement). 13 June 2009. p. 1.
  14. "Literary Principles as against theory", in Christopher Ricks, Essays in Appreciation, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1996, pp. 311–332, p. 312.

External links

Categories: