> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Stephen Vincent" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Tuesday, January 10, 2006 7:32 PM
> Subject: Re: Money and poetry
>
>> Most famously, students of I.A.
>> Richards and Empson (sp?), worked for British Intelligence in World War
> II.
>> The critical skills acquired from examining poems at close range (7 Kinds
> of
>> Ambiguity, etc.) were crucial to deciphering German code.
>
> Really? I knew about the mathematicians (like Turing) and the chess masters
> (like C.H.O'D. Alexander and Leonard Barden) but didn't know that the tribes
> of Practical Criticism and Some Versions of Pastoral were holed out at
> Bletchley too. Fascinating - bet they were very junior though!
>
> I know those writers who worked in some capacity for British Intelligence
> during WWII were a very unusual assortment, imagine John Betjeman and
> Patrick White as even being in the same room together!
>
> Best
>
> Dave
Yeah, I don't claim to be expert on this. But I think it came up again in a
recent biography of Empson, which gives account of his students and the code
breaking business.
I was heavily dosed with New Criticism in the late fifties, early sixties.
My roommate at the time, Dick Arthur, claimed he found an 8th Type of
Ambiguity. (Later - after huge doses of Acid and Grass, he would become a
superior in the Hari Krishna headquarters in Texas - so much for training -
or going crazy - under the spell of new criticism.) But you do tend to go
around cracking everything in site for its paradoxes, ambiguities, ironies,
etc. It took years before I could get swept away by anything! New Criticism
is probably why the mid-sixties took up drugs and other sexy enhancers. (You
can quote me!)
Took along time to break that yoke.
Stephen V
http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
|