Search engine for discovering works of Art, research articles, and books related to Art and Culture
Javascript must be enabled to continue!
Hermeneutic Circling: Empson, Rosemund Tuve, and the ‘Wimsatt Law’
View through CrossRef
Abstract
In ‘The Marriage of Marvell’, William Empson challenges a 1939 article by one Fred Tupper claiming that Marvell never married his housekeeper. The dispute is full of side issues, and when at length Empson tires of all the parry and thrust, he turns on his opponent: ‘The fatal weakness of Tupper’, says Empson, ‘is that he has no sense of character’ ( UB 51). This round assertion makes the point I want to come back to in the end. For Empson, to grasp an intention is to have a sense of character, to know, like the magistrate Fielding, what a certain person would think or do in certain circumstances.1 The wonderfully Dickensian Tupper is a character who has no sense of character: in the spirit of this observation we infer that the critic is to approach an author or author’s character (e.g. Joyce’s Bloom) just as a novelist divines the motives of a character.
Title: Hermeneutic Circling: Empson, Rosemund Tuve, and the ‘Wimsatt Law’
Description:
Abstract
In ‘The Marriage of Marvell’, William Empson challenges a 1939 article by one Fred Tupper claiming that Marvell never married his housekeeper.
The dispute is full of side issues, and when at length Empson tires of all the parry and thrust, he turns on his opponent: ‘The fatal weakness of Tupper’, says Empson, ‘is that he has no sense of character’ ( UB 51).
This round assertion makes the point I want to come back to in the end.
For Empson, to grasp an intention is to have a sense of character, to know, like the magistrate Fielding, what a certain person would think or do in certain circumstances.
1 The wonderfully Dickensian Tupper is a character who has no sense of character: in the spirit of this observation we infer that the critic is to approach an author or author’s character (e.
g.
Joyce’s Bloom) just as a novelist divines the motives of a character.
Related Results
From Constitutional Comparison to Life in the Biosphere
From Constitutional Comparison to Life in the Biosphere
From Constitutional Comparison to Life in the Biosphere is a monograph that argues for a fundamental reorientation of constitutional law around the realities of biospheric interdep...
Some Versions of Empson
Some Versions of Empson
Abstract
William Empson was one of the most important poet-critics of the twentieth century, and continues to influence and inspire writers from many divergent criti...
Mezinárodní právo na prahu 21. století (dosažený stav, neúspěchy a perspektivy)
Mezinárodní právo na prahu 21. století (dosažený stav, neúspěchy a perspektivy)
The study deal with selected problems of international law at the time of change of the 20th and 21st centuries. Such a milestone gives an opportunity to review the achieved state ...
Paul’s view of the law in Romans and the Ethiopic tradition
Paul’s view of the law in Romans and the Ethiopic tradition
ABSTRACT
This dissertation examines Paul’s view of the law in Romans, interacting with modern exegetical traditions addressing the Old, New, and Radical New Perspectives, aiming to...
William Empson
William Empson
Abstract
Following the acclaimed first volume, Among the Mandarins, this is the second and concluding volume of the authorized biography of William Empson, one of th...
Empson and the Gifts of China
Empson and the Gifts of China
Abstract
William Empson cherished ‘our strong and critical curiosity about alien modes of feeling, our need for the flying buttress of sympathy with systems other th...
Coleridge, Christ, and Contradiction in Empson
Coleridge, Christ, and Contradiction in Empson
Abstract
One of the questions that most interests admirers of Empson is the continuity, or otherwise, of his career. What does the intricate textual analysis of Seve...
Editorial: Complexity of Medical Law
Editorial: Complexity of Medical Law
If one puts forward a question what medical law is all about, the common answer will be medical mishaps as result of clinical negligence leading to lawsuit and/or inquires of disci...