Christopher Ricks
Encyclopedia
Sir Christopher Bruce Ricks, FBA
(born 1933) is a British literary critic and scholar. He is the William M. and Sara B. Warren Professor of the Humanities at Boston University
(U.S.
) and Co-Director of the Editorial Institute
at Boston University
, and was Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford
(England
) from 2004 to 2009. He is the immediate past-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
has 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.
and studied at Balliol College, Oxford
, where he took a first
in English
. 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 the then revelatory connection 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 he was King Edward VII Professor of English Literature
, 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.
. 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 Dr. 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 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 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'.
British Academy
The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national body for the humanities and the social sciences. Its purpose is to inspire, recognise and support excellence in the humanities and social sciences, throughout the UK and internationally, and to champion their role and value.It receives an annual...
(born 1933) is a British literary critic and scholar. He is the William M. and Sara B. Warren Professor of the Humanities at Boston University
Boston University
Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...
(U.S.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
) and Co-Director of the Editorial Institute
Editorial Institute
The Editorial Institute at Boston University was founded in 2000 by Christopher Ricks and Geoffrey Hill with "the conviction that the textually sound, contextually annotated edition is central to the intellectual life of many disciplines." The primary aims of the Institute are to promote critical...
at Boston University
Boston University
Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...
, and was Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
(England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
) from 2004 to 2009. He is the immediate past-president of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics
Association of Literary Scholars and Critics
The Association of Literary Scholars, Critics and Writers was organized in 1994 as the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics by a group of over 400 scholars troubled by what they saw as an over reliance on post-modern theory in the academy...
.
He is known as a champion of Victorian poetry; an enthusiast of Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
, whose lyrics he has analysed at book-length; a trenchant reviewer of writers he considers pretentious (Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
Herbert Marshall McLuhan, CC was a Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar—a professor of English literature, a literary critic, a rhetorician, and a communication theorist...
, Christopher Norris
Christopher Norris
Christopher Charles Norris is a British philosopher and literary critic.-Career:As of 2011 Prof. Norris is Distinguished Research Professor in Philosophy at Cardiff University...
, Geoffrey Hartman
Geoffrey Hartman
Geoffrey H. Hartman is a German-born American literary theorist, sometimes identified with the Yale School of deconstruction, but also has written on a wide range of subjects, and cannot be categorized by a single school or method.-Biography:...
, Stanley Fish
Stanley Fish
Stanley Eugene Fish is an American literary theorist and legal scholar. He was born and raised in Providence, Rhode Island...
); and a warm reviewer of those he thinks humane or humorous (F. R. Leavis
F. R. Leavis
Frank Raymond "F. R." Leavis CH was an influential British literary critic of the early-to-mid-twentieth century. He taught for nearly his entire career at Downing College, Cambridge.-Early life:...
, W. K. Wimsatt, Christina Stead
Christina Stead
Christina Stead was an Australian novelist and short-story writer acclaimed for her satirical wit and penetrating psychological characterisations.-Biography:...
). Hugh Kenner
Hugh Kenner
William Hugh Kenner , was a Canadian literary scholar, critic and professor.Kenner was born in Peterborough, Ontario on January 7, 1923; his father taught classics...
has praised his 'intent eloquence', and Geoffrey Hill
Geoffrey Hill
Geoffrey Hill is an English poet, professor emeritus of English literature and religion, and former co-director of the Editorial Institute, at Boston University. Hill has been considered to be among the most distinguished poets of his generation...
his 'unrivalled critical intelligence'. W. H. Auden
W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...
described Ricks as 'exactly the kind of critic every poet dreams of finding'.. John Carey
John Carey (critic)
John Carey is a British literary critic, and emeritus Merton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. He was born in Barnes, London, and educated at Richmond and East Sheen Boys’ Grammar School, winning an Open Scholarship to St John's College, Oxford. He served in the East...
calls him the 'greatest living critic.
Life
He was born in BeckenhamBeckenham
Beckenham is a town in the London Borough of Bromley, England. It is located 8.4 miles south east of Charing Cross and 1.75 miles west of Bromley town...
and studied at Balliol College, Oxford
Balliol College, Oxford
Balliol College , founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England but founded by a family with strong Scottish connections....
, where he took a first
British undergraduate degree classification
The British undergraduate degree classification system is a grading scheme for undergraduate degrees in the United Kingdom...
in English
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
. He served in the Green Howards in the British Army
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
in 1953/4 in Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
. He was a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Worcester College, Oxford
Worcester College, Oxford
Worcester College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. The college was founded in the eighteenth century, but its predecessor on the same site had been an institution of learning since the late thirteenth century...
, moving in 1968, after a sabbatical year
Sabbatical year
Sabbatical or a sabbatical is a rest from work, or a hiatus, often lasting from two months to a year. The concept of sabbatical has a source in shmita, described several places in the Bible...
at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, to become Professor of English at the University of Bristol
University of Bristol
The University of Bristol is a public research university located in Bristol, United Kingdom. One of the so-called "red brick" universities, it received its Royal Charter in 1909, although its predecessor institution, University College, Bristol, had been in existence since 1876.The University is...
.
During his time at Bristol he worked on Keats
John Keats
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
and Embarrassment (1974), in which he made the then revelatory connection 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
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
, where he was King Edward VII Professor of English Literature
King Edward VII Professor of English Literature
The King Edward VII Professorship of English Literature is one of the senior professorships in literature at the University of Cambridge, and was founded by a donation from Sir Harold Harmsworth in 1910 in memory of King Edward VII who had died earlier that year.-King Edward VII Professors:* Arthur...
, before leaving for Boston University
Boston University
Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...
in 1986. In June 2011 it was announced he would join the professoriate of New College of the Humanities
New College of the Humanities
New College of the Humanities is a proposed new private for-profit undergraduate college in London, England, the creation of which was announced in June 2011 by the philosopher A.C. Grayling, its founder and first master...
, a private college in London.
He was knighted
Knight Bachelor
The rank of Knight Bachelor is a part of the British honours system. It is the most basic rank of a man who has been knighted by the monarch but not as a member of one of the organised Orders of Chivalry...
in the 2009 Birthday Honours.
Principles against theory
Ricks has distinguished himself as a vigorous upholder of traditional principles of reading based on practical criticismI. A. Richards
Ivor Armstrong Richards was an influential English literary critic and rhetorician....
. He has opposed the theory-driven hermeneutics of the post-structuralist
Post-structuralism
Post-structuralism is a label formulated by American academics to denote the heterogeneous works of a series of French intellectuals who came to international prominence in the 1960s and '70s...
and postmodernist
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
. This places him outside the post-New Critical literary theory
Literary theory
Literary theory in a strict sense is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for analyzing literature. However, literary scholarship since the 19th century often includes—in addition to, or even instead of literary theory in the strict sense—considerations of...
, to which he prefers the Johnsonian
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...
principle.
In an important essay, 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 deconstructs
Deconstruction
Deconstruction is a term introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida in his 1967 book Of Grammatology. Although he carefully avoided defining the term directly, he sought to apply Martin Heidegger's concept of Destruktion or Abbau, to textual reading...
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 hybris
Hybris
Hybris may refer to:* Hubris, exaggerated self pride. "Hybris" is an alternative transliteration of the original ancient Greek word ὕβρις.* 430 Hybris, a typical Main belt asteroid* Hybris , the first studio album by Änglagård...
, 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 MoresEdward Rowe MoresEdward Rowe Mores, FSA was an English antiquarian and scholar, with works on history and typography...
(1961) editor with Harry Carter - MiltonJohn MiltonJohn Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
's Grand Style (1963) - Poems and Critics (1966) anthology
- The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence SterneLaurence SterneLaurence Sterne was an Irish novelist and an Anglican clergyman. He is best known for his novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy; but he also published many sermons, wrote memoirs, and was involved in local politics...
(1967) editor with Graham Petrie - Twentieth Century Views: A. E. HousmanA. E. HousmanAlfred Edward Housman , usually known as A. E. Housman, was an English classical scholar and poet, best known to the general public for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad. Lyrical and almost epigrammatic in form, the poems were mostly written before 1900...
(1968) editor - Paradise LostParadise LostParadise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse...
and Paradise RegainedParadise RegainedParadise Regained is a poem by the English poet John Milton, published in 1671. It is connected by name to his earlier and more famous epic poem Paradise Lost, with which it shares similar theological themes...
by John MiltonJohn MiltonJohn Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
(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 ArnoldMatthew ArnoldMatthew Arnold was a British poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, literary professor, and William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator...
(1972) editor - Keats and Embarrassment (1974)
- Geoffrey HillGeoffrey HillGeoffrey Hill is an English poet, professor emeritus of English literature and religion, and former co-director of the Editorial Institute, at Boston University. Hill has been considered to be among the most distinguished poets of his generation...
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. EliotT. S. EliotThomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
and Prejudice (1988) - A. E. HousmanA. E. HousmanAlfred Edward Housman , usually known as A. E. Housman, was an English classical scholar and poet, best known to the general public for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad. Lyrical and almost epigrammatic in form, the poems were mostly written before 1900...
: Collected Poems and Selected Prose (1988) editor - The Faber Book of America (1992) editor with William L. Vance
- The Golden Treasury (1991) editor
- BeckettSamuel BeckettSamuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
's Dying Words (1993) - Essays in Appreciation (1996)
- Inventions of the March Hare: Poems, 1909-1917 by T. S. EliotT. S. EliotThomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
(1996) editor - The Oxford Book of English VerseOxford Book of English VerseThe Oxford Book of English Verse most commonly means the Oxford Book of English Verse 1250–1900 edited by Arthur Quiller-Couch, an anthology of English poetry that had a very substantial influence on popular taste and perception of poetry for at least a generation...
(1999) editor - Allusion to the Poets (2002)
- Selected Poems of James HenryJames Henry (poet)James Henry was an Irish classical scholar and poet.-Life:He was born in Dublin the son of a woollen draper, Robert Henry, and his wife Kathleen Elder. He was educated by Unitarian schoolmasters and then at Trinity College, Dublin...
(2002) editor - Reviewery (2003) essays
- DylanBob DylanBob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
's Visions of Sin (2003) - Decisions And Revisions In T. S. EliotT. S. EliotThomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
(2003) - Samuel MenasheSamuel MenasheSamuel Menashe was an American poet. Born in New York City as Samuel Menashe Weisberg, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, Menashe grew up in Elmhurst, Queens, and graduated from Townsend Harris High School and Queens College. During World War II he served in the US Army infantry, and in...
: Selected Poems (2005) editor - True Friendship: Geoffrey Hill, Anthony Hecht and Robert Lowell Under the Sign of Eliot and Pound (2010)
- The Complete Poems of T.S Eliot (2011) Co-editor with Jim McCue
External links
- Editorial Institute
- Profile of Christopher Ricks at Guardian UnlimitedGuardian Unlimitedguardian.co.uk, formerly known as Guardian Unlimited, is a British website owned by the Guardian Media Group. Georgina Henry is the editor...
- Christopher Ricks Playlist Appearance on WMBR's Dinnertime Sampler radio show October 13, 2004