Editing William Empson (section)

===Style, method and influence===
Empson is today best known for his literary criticism, and in particular his analysis of the use of language in poetical works: his own poems are arguably undervalued, although they were admired by and influenced English poets in the 1950s. The philosopher [[Ludwig Wittgenstein]] was an acquaintance at Cambridge, but Empson consistently denied any previous or direct influence on his work.<ref>Cf. William Empson, ''The Complete Poems'', ed. John Haffenden, London: Penguin, 2000. xiv–xv, 257-61 (for the reference to Wittgenstein in his poem, "This Last Pain", 1930).</ref> Empson's best-known work is the book ''[[Seven Types of Ambiguity]]'', which, together with ''Some Versions of Pastoral'' and ''The Structure of Complex Words'', mines the astonishing riches of linguistic ambiguity in English poetic literature. Empson's studies unearth layer upon layer of irony, suggestion and argumentation in various literary works, applying a technique of textual criticism so influential that often Empson's contributions to certain domains of literary scholarship remain significant, though they may no longer be recognised as his. The universal recognition of the difficulty and complexity (indeed, ambiguity) of Shakespeare's [[Sonnet 94]] ("They that have power ..."), for instance, is traceable to Empson's analysis in ''Some Versions of Pastoral''. Empson's study of "Sonnet 94" goes some way towards explaining the high esteem in which the sonnet is now held (often being reckoned as among the finest sonnets), as well as the technique of criticism and interpretation that has thus reckoned it.

Empson's technique of teasing a rich variety of interpretations from poetic literature does not, however, exhaustively characterise his critical practice. He was also very interested in the human or experiential reality to be discovered in great works of literature, as is manifest, for instance, in his discussion of the fortunes of the notion of [[proletarian literature]] in ''Some Versions of Pastoral''. His commitment to unravelling or articulating the experiential truth or reality in literature permitted him unusual avenues to explore sociopolitical ideas in literature in a vein very different from contemporary [[Marxist]] critics or scholars of [[New Historicism]]. Thus, for instance, Empson remarks in the first few pages of ''Some Versions of Pastoral'' that:
      
<blockquote>[[Thomas Gray|Gray's]] ''Elegy'' is an odd case of poetry with latent political ideas:

:Full many a gem of purest ray serene
:The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear;
:Full many a flower is born to blush unseen
:And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

What this means, as the context makes clear, is that eighteenth century England had no scholarship system or ''carrière ouverte aux talents''. This is stated as pathetic, but the reader is put into a mood in which one would not try to alter it. ... By comparing the social arrangement to Nature he makes it seem inevitable, which it was not, and gives it a dignity which was undeserved. ... The tone of melancholy claims that the poet understands the considerations opposed to aristocracy, though he judges against them; the truism of the reflections in the churchyard, the universality and impersonality this gives to the style, claim as if by comparison that we ought to accept the injustice of society as we do the inevitability of death.</blockquote>

Empson goes on to deliver his political verdict with a psychological suggestion:

<blockquote>Many people, without being communists, have been irritated by the complacence in the massive calm of the poem, and this seems partly because they feel there is a cheat in the implied politics; the "bourgeois" themselves do not like literature to have too much "bourgeois ideology".</blockquote>

Empson also made remarks reminiscent of Dr [[Samuel Johnson]] in their pained insistence:

<blockquote>And yet what is said is one of the permanent truths; it is only in degree that any improvement of society could prevent wastage of human powers; the waste even in a fortunate life, the isolation even of a life rich in intimacy, cannot but be felt deeply, and is the central feeling of tragedy. And anything of value must accept this because it must not prostitute itself; its strength is to be prepared to waste itself, if it does not get its opportunity. A statement of this is certainly non-political because it is true in any society, and yet nearly all the great poetic statements of it are in a way "bourgeois", like this one; they suggest to readers, though they do not say, that for the poor man things cannot be improved even in degree.</blockquote>

Despite the complexity of Empson's critical methods and attitude, his work, in particular ''Seven Types of Ambiguity'', had a significant impact on the [[New Criticism]], a school of criticism that directed particular attention to [[close reading]] of texts, among whose adherents may be numbered [[F. R. Leavis]] (whose critical approach was, however, already well developed before Empson appeared on the scene – he had been teaching at Cambridge since 1925), although Empson could scarcely be described as an adherent or exponent of such a school or, indeed, of any critical school at all. Indeed, Empson consistently ridiculed, both outrightly in words and implicitly in practice, the doctrine of the [[intentional fallacy]] formulated by [[William K. Wimsatt]], an influential New Critic. Indeed, Empson's distaste for New Criticism could manifest itself in a distinctively dismissive and brusque wit, as when he described [[New Criticism]] (which he ironically labelled "the new rigour") as a "campaign to make poetry as dull as possible" (''Essays on Renaissance Literature'', Volume 1: ''Donne and the New Philosophy'', p.&nbsp;122). Similarly, both the title and the content of one of Empson's volumes of critical papers, ''Using Biography'', show a patent and polemical disregard for the teachings of New Critics as much as for those of [[Roland Barthes]] and [[postmodern]] literary theories predicated upon, if not merely influenced by, the notion of [[the Death of the Author]], despite the fact that some scholars regard Empson as a progenitor of certain of these currents of criticism, which vexed Empson. As Frank Kermode stated:

<blockquote>Now and again somebody like [[Christopher Norris (critic)|Christopher Norris]] may, in a pious moment, attempt to "recuperate" a particularly brilliant old-style reputation by claiming its owner as a New New Critic ''avant la lettre'' – Empson in this case, now to be thought of as having, in his "great theoretical summa," ''The Structure of Complex Words'', anticipated [[deconstruction]]. The grumpy old man repudiated this notion with his habitual scorn, calling the work of Derrida (or, as he preferred to call him, "Nerrida") "very disgusting" (Kermode, ''Pleasure, Change, and the Canon'')</blockquote>