克林斯·布鲁克斯

克林斯·布鲁克斯（Cleanth Brooks，1906年10月16日—1994年5月10日），美国文学批评家。一般将其批评方法归之为“细读”，《现代诗与传统》（1939）和《精致的瓮：诗歌结构研究》（1947）是其代表作。他早期研究过17世纪的古籍，编有《托马斯·珀西通信集》。另外他还与人合著了《文学批评简史》（1957），撰写了其中20世纪英美批评家的部分。1963年发表的《威廉·福克纳：约克纳帕塔法县》是一部详细研究威廉·福克纳的著作。 布鲁克斯也是南方文学的杰出评论家，撰写了关于威廉·福克纳的经典著作，并与罗伯特·佩恩·沃伦共同创办了有影响力的期刊《南方评论》（Leitch 2001）。

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.

Brooks was also the preeminent critic of Southern literature, writing classic texts on William Faulkner, and co-founder of the influential journal The Southern Review (Leitch 2001) with Robert Penn Warren.

Life and career

Early life

On October 16, 1906, in Murray, Kentucky, Brooks was born to a Methodist minister, the Reverend Cleanth Brooks Sr., and Bessie Lee Witherspoon Brooks (Leitch 2001). He was one of three children: Cleanth and William, natural born sons, and Murray Brooks, actually born Hewitt Witherspoon, whom Bessie Lee Witherspoon kidnapped from her brother Forrest Bedford Witherspoon as a young baby after the natural mother had died. She later was able to change his name to Murray Brooks and continued to raise him as her own, causing quite a rift in her own family and alienating herself from Cleanth and William. Cleanth mentioned on more than one occasion that she so doted on Murray (Hewitt) that she no longer had a relationship with Cleanth and William. Attending McTyeire School, a private academy, he received a classical education and went on to study at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, where he received his B.A. summa cum laude in 1928 (Leitch 2001). In 1928, Brooks received his M.A. from Tulane University and went on to study at Exeter College, Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar. He received his B.A. (first class) in 1931 and his B.Litt. the following year. Brooks then returned to the United States and from 1932 to 1947 was a professor of English at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge (Singh 1991). In 1934, he married Edith Amy Blanchord.

Vanderbilt

During his studies at Vanderbilt, he met literary critics and future collaborators Robert Penn Warren, John Crowe Ransom, Andrew Lytle, and Donald Davidson (Singh 1991). Studying with Ransom and Warren, Brooks became involved in two significant literary movements: the Southern Agrarians and the Fugitives (Singh 1991). Brooks admitted to reading the Southern Agrarian manifesto, I'll Take My Stand (1930) "over and over" (qtd. in Leitch 2001). While he never argued for the movement's conservative Southern traditions, he "learned a great deal" (qtd. in Leitch 2001) and found the Agrarian position valuable and "unobjectionable" (qtd. in Leitch 2001): "They asked that we consider what the good life is or ought to be" (qtd. in Leitch 2001).

The Fugitive Movement similarly influenced Brooks' approach to criticism. The Fugitives, a group of Southern poets consisting of such influential writers as John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Donald Davidson, and Robert Penn Warren, met Saturday evenings to read and discuss poetry written by members of the group (Singh 1991). The discussion was based on intensive readings and included considerations of a poem's form, structure, meter, rhyme scheme, and imagery (Singh 1991). This close reading formed the foundation on which the New Critical movement was based and helped shape Brooks' approach to criticism (Singh 1991).