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William Empson and the Common Sense of Theory by Robert Reay

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William Empson and the Common Sense of Theory by Robert Reay William Empson and The Common Sense of Theory By Robert Reay-Jones A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Cardiff University, Philosophy Section School of English, Communication and Philosophy April 2007 UMI Number: U584944 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U584944 Published by ProQuest LLC 2013. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 DECLARATION This work has not previously been accepted In substance for any degree and is not concurrently submitted in candidature for any degree. Signed.. .................................................................. (candidate) D ate. STATEMENT 1 This thesis is being submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree o f .....................................(insert MCh, MD, MPhil, PhD etc, as appropriate) Signed .................................... (candidate) D ate ......... STATEMENT 2 This thesis is the result of my own independent work/investigation, except where otherwise stated. *Q&er sources are acknowledged by explicit references. Signed h . ...<T^L ^ (candidate) D ate ........L (../jG .(ft. f..Z& <9 7 “ [STATEMENT 3 J hereby give consent for my thesis, if accepted, to be available for photocopying and for inter-library loan, and for the tide and summary to be made available to outside organisations. Signed ~ (candidate) Date ... U/oM/- z&o STATEMENT 4 - BAR ON ACCESS APPROVED I hereby give consent for my thesis, if accepted, to be available for photocopying and for inter-library loans after &*Dirv of a bar on accessapproved bv the Graduate Development Committee. ..................... (candidate) D ate .... 11 . ft.Q. For my parents Abstract ‘As for teaching - I quite like talking to myself in public. The thing is to look at the blackboard or anyway not at the assembled frogs. They can read what you write on the board though they can’t understand what you say. If you write steadily on the board and keep up a spoken patter, never waiting for signs of intelligence or making jokes, the hour gets through all right’ (SL 40). Thus wrote William Empson from Japan in a letter to John Hayward in 1932. Empson’s early experience as an English teacher in the Far East helped shape the formation of his ambivalent attitudes towards the varied audiences he felt himself compelled to address as a publicly-minded intellectual who always wrote in fear of the charges of elitism and solipsism. Yet there is a sense in which Empson was not always altogether able, nor perhaps even willing, to resist the trappings of solipsistic eccentricity. Aware of his own idiosyncratic critical vision, Empson struggled with the social and theoretical implications of the ultra-refined rationalising drive that motivated his analytical concentration on ‘the words on the page’. And though as a critic with distinct and highly sophisticated philosophical inclinations, he was not averse to engaging in spirited controversy with contemporary academic theorists and philosophers, still he was also keen to foster a sense of common belonging with the ‘ordinary tolerably informed reader’, to cultivate a sense of pastoral intimacy with a broader, non-specialised community, the ‘assembled frogs’ in the classroom and beyond. The resulting tension in his work between the democratic, commonsensical impulse of a publicly-minded intellectual speaking for our common ‘social experience’ (a key Empson phrase), translating for the greatest possible number, and the unarticulated, elitist products of an idiosyncratic critical consciousness, is the central topic of this dissertation. Empson scholar-theorists have often dealt elliptically with this sturdy resistance to theory by stressing the man’s ‘common sense rationalism’ (Christopher Norris), the ‘reasonableness’ (Paul Fry) of a ‘reluctant metacritic’ (John Haffenden) keen to resist the professionalization of Eng. Lit. in its varied ‘bother-headed theoretical’ forms. Yet both Empson’s homespun rationalism and his resistance to theory are shot through with tensions similar to those which structure his difficult attempt to reconcile the conflicting voices of articulate populism and elitist marginality. The recent publication of Haffenden’s two-volume biography (OUP 2005-2006) and of his edition of the Selected Letters (OUP 2006), as well as the forthcoming publication of a collection of essays edited by Matthew Bevis entitled Some Versions o f Empson (OUP 2007), give Empson scholars and enthusiasts an opportunity to reflect on the ambiguities of Empson’s theoretical and pedagogical legacy. 2 Table of Contents Acknowledgements 5 Abbreviations 6 1. Introduction 7 2. Empson Past and Present 12 I. Introduction: Empson and Theory 12 II. Some Misconceived Versions of Empson 28 III. Sensible Empson 42 3. Theory and the Form of Critical Debate 51 I. Introduction 51 II. The Ethics of Critical Pedagogy 54 III. The Geometric Virtues of Analysis: Seven Types and Beyond 61 IV. Reasoning with Pleasure 69 V. Pastoral Irony and the Defence of Commensurability 80 VI. The Problem of Pluralism: Complex Words and Beyond 86 VII. Conclusion: Some Notes on Irony and Truth in ‘Tom Jones’ 94 4. Analysis: Reach and Limits 97 I. Introduction 97 II. The Commitments of Empsonian Rationalism 98 III. Acknowledged Remainders 105 IV. Unacknowledged Remainders 111 V. Conclusion: Empson on Consciousness and the Sublime 126 5. Style and the Critical Community 131 3 I. Introduction: Changing Paradigms 131 II. The Principle of Irenic Sympathy 136 III. Empson’s Ideal Community 141 IV. Reason, Feeling, and Sympathy 151 V. The Limits of Irenic Sympathy 160 VI. The Art of Reluctance 164 VII. Conclusion 177 6. Divided Empson 180 I. Introduction 180 II. Unity, Conflict and Critical Method 183 III. Critical Contradictions 187 IV. Reasoning with Conflicts 193 V. Contradiction and the Resilience of Reason 198 VI. The Virtues of Liberal Existentialism 203 VII. Conclusion 210 7. Conclusion 213 Bibliography 219 4 Acknowledgements It is a great pleasure to acknowledge the unfailing help and encouragement from many people during the course of this work. I owe a great debt of gratitude to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for the provision of an EU doctoral grant. In the department of philosophy at Cardiff University, special thanks are due to my supervisor Professor Christopher Norris for much helpful advice and support. It has been a great privilege to work under his guidance, and a pleasure to benefit from his wisdom and good humour. I also wish to thank Dr Alessandra Tanesini for her support and for her help in securing my AHRC grant. I am deeply grateful to Professor Ronald Shusterman of the University of Bordeaux, for his unfailing support and encouragement long after I left Bordeaux, and for his constant interest in my work on Empson and other topics. I am also grateful to Professor Joseph Urbas of the University of Bordeaux, for his invaluable advice on my Bordeaux dissertations on Malcolm Bradbury and Empson and for his continued support of my work. Finally, on the most personal level, I wish to thank my family and my friends, for the affectionate support they have provided throughout the course of these last years. 5 Abbreviations In this dissertation I refer to Empson’s works by abbreviations. The abbreviations and editions I use are as follows: ST Seven Types o f Ambiguity, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995, first published in 1930. P Some Versions o f Pastoral, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996, first published in 1935. CW The Structure o f Complex Words, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995, first published in 1951. MG Milton’s God, London: Chatto and Windus, 1965, first published in 1961. CV Coleridge’s Verse: a Selection, ed. William Empson and David B. Pirie, London: Faber and Faber, 1972. UB Using Biography, London: Chatto and Windus, 1984. ES Essays on Shakespeare, ed. David B. Pirie, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. RB The Royal Beasts and Other Works, ed. John Haffenden, London: Chatto and Windus, 1986. ARG Argufying: Essays on Literature and Culture, ed. John Haffenden, London: Chatto and Windus, 1987. FC Faustus and the Censor: The English Faust-book and Marlowe’s ‘Doctor Faustus ed. John Henry Jones, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987. ER1 Essays on Renaissance Literature, ed. John Haffenden, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Vol.l: Donne and the New Philosophy (1993). ER2 Essays on Renaissance Literature, ed. John Haffenden, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Vol.2: The Drama, 1994). SSS The Strengths of Shakespeare’s Shrew: Essays, Memoirs and Reviews, ed. John Haffenden, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996. CP Collected Poems, ed. John Haffenden, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2001, first published in 2000. SL Selected Letters o f William Empson, ed. John Haffenden, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. 6 Introduction Terry Eagleton famously described Sir William Empson as ‘the critic as clown’1 to explain Empson’s complex understanding of the relation between critic and audience, his ambivalent sense of marginality and social responsibility. There are in fact a number of other such figurations that provide a similar way into Empson’s critical and creative work. The methodological appeal of these critical images or figurations is that they reflect Empson’s own more or less implicit interest in various figures of criticism, such as the critic as amateur or the critic as pastoral anti-hero. One conviction of the Empsonian pastoral critic is that independence of judgement, one of the rational humanist ‘verbal fictions’ he most steadfastly defended, is best fostered by the preservation of amateurism in criticism.
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