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 Seven Types for which Empson quickly became known (and in some quarters notorious: ‘merely early William Empsonism’ was not a term of praise in R. S. Crane’s book)1 have to do with the boisterous, sometimes knockabout, pugnacity of Milton’s God and the essays on Donne and Marlowe and others, polemically preoccupied by the wickedness of the Christian God and the pernicious effects of neo-Christianity? Empson was quite aware that admirers of the early work thought his later stuff regrettably off-track, as though betraying some loss of due purpose or even magnanimity. Denis Donoghue shook his head (‘an indisputable grandeur of spirit denies itself and becomes, when the theme is Christianity, pinched and nasty’) and scolded the scion of Yokefleet Hall: ‘Undermining a man’s faith is not the work of a gentleman.’² Empson disputed any charge of gifts going to waste, needless to say: a breezy exasperation with such unenlightened times became a hallmark.