Remarks by John Crowe Ransom | V2Melody Quotations

“Here is contemporary literature, waiting for its criticism; where are the professors of literature?”

A memorable challenge to academics whom he believed were neglecting the literature of their own time. · Essay, Criticism, Inc.

“The more eminent the professor of English, the less apt he is to be able to write decent criticism.”

A deliberately provocative challenge to the assumption that scholarly eminence automatically produces good literary criticism. · Essay, Criticism, Inc.

“English might almost as well announce that it does not regard itself as entirely autonomous, but as a branch of the department of history.”

His humorous attack on literary scholarship that treats literature chiefly as historical evidence. · Essay, Criticism, Inc.

“The department of English is charged with the understanding and the communication of literature, an art, yet it has usually forgotten to inquire into the peculiar constitution and structure of its product.”

A pointed complaint that literary departments can neglect the artistic nature of the works they study. · Essay, Criticism, Inc.

“The studies which I have mentioned have immeasurably improved in understanding since they were taken over by the universities.”

He uses the development of other academic disciplines to argue for a more rigorous literary criticism. · Essay, Criticism, Inc.

“It does not matter whether we call them sciences or just systematic studies; the total effort of each to be effective must be consolidated and kept going.”

He values sustained intellectual effort more than arguments over disciplinary labels. · Essay, Criticism, Inc.

“It will never be a very exact science, or even a nearly exact one.”

Even while advocating systematic criticism, he acknowledges the limits of literary study as a science. · Essay, Criticism, Inc.

“The critic is surely himself a literary creator, and his work starts with a spontaneous surge of piety, and is inducted by the contagion of art into a composition of his own.”

He gives literary criticism a creative dignity, describing the critic as an artist responding to art. · Essay, Criticism, Inc.

“The poet wishes to defend his object’s existence against its enemies, and the critic wishes to know what he is doing, and how.”

He presents poet and critic as complementary figures, one creating and the other seeking to understand the creation. · Essay, Criticism, Inc.

“He knows that his practical interests will reduce this living object to a mere utility, and that his sciences will disintegrate it for their convenience into their respective abstracts.”

A criticism of the tendency to reduce complex human experience to useful or abstract categories. · Essay, Criticism, Inc.

“His poem celebrates the object which is real, individual, and qualitatively infinite.”

He stresses the poet’s concern with the irreducible richness of particular things. · Essay, Criticism, Inc.

“The poet perpetuates in his poem an order of existence which in actual life is constantly crumbling beneath his touch.”

A striking account of poetry as an attempt to preserve the richness and individuality of experience. · Essay, Criticism, Inc.

“Criticism is the attempt to define and enjoy the aesthetic or characteristic values of literature.”

He defines criticism as an act of both understanding and enjoyment rather than mere information gathering. · Essay, Criticism, Inc.

“The professional morale of the professors is very high, but their critical morale is very low.”

His distinction between professional standing and the intellectual standards he expected from literary critics. · Essay, Criticism, Inc.

“Professors of literature are learned but not critical men.”

A sharp criticism of literary scholarship that accumulates knowledge without necessarily developing critical judgement. · Essay, Criticism, Inc.

“Perhaps I use a distasteful figure, but I have the idea that what we need is Criticism, Inc., or Criticism, Ltd.”

A deliberately provocative formulation of his call for a more systematic critical enterprise. · Essay, Criticism, Inc.

“Rather than occasional criticism by amateurs, I should think the whole enterprise might be seriously taken in hand by professionals.”

His provocative proposal for making literary criticism a more rigorous professional discipline. · Essay, Criticism, Inc.

“The critic should find in the poem a total poetic or individual object which tends to be universalized.”

His emphasis on treating the poem as an integrated artistic whole rather than reducing it to historical or biographical information. · Essay, Criticism, Inc.

“The students of the future must be permitted to study literature, and not merely about literature.”

A forceful argument for direct engagement with literature rather than allowing literary study to become detached from the works themselves. · Essay, Criticism, Inc.

“I hate the professional poet.”

His blunt objection to poets who risk turning artistic practice into a career of self-imitation. · Conversation with Robert Penn Warren, as recalled by Warren

“I want always to be the amateur, the poet who writes because he needs to and loves it, and not because it is his profession.”

A memorable statement of his resistance to professionalising poetic creativity. · Conversation with Robert Penn Warren, as recalled by Warren

“I want to have the joy of writing the poem of discovery.”

He valued poetry for the discovery involved in making it, not simply for producing another successful poem. · Conversation with Robert Penn Warren, as recalled by Warren

“The poem is a loose logical structure with an irrelevant local texture.”

A concise expression of his influential distinction between a poem’s logical structure and its rich verbal texture. · Book, The New Criticism

“Criticism must become more scientific, or precise and systematic.”

His call for literary criticism to become more disciplined and exacting. · Essay, Criticism, Inc.

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