bucketdaa.blogg.se - William empson's seven types of ambiguity

The ambiguity may be less deliberate, steered more by the poet’s attempts to express something ineffable, as in Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “The Windhover.” At the sight of a bird diving through the air, the speaker marvels, “Brute beauty and valor and act, oh, air, pride, plume here / Buckle!” The ambiguity of this phrase lies in the exclamation of “buckle”: The verb could be descriptive of the action, or it could be the speaker’s imperative. As poet and critic William Empson wrote in his influential book Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930), “The machinations of ambiguity are among the very roots of poetry.” A poet may consciously join together incompatible words to disrupt the reader’s expectation of meaning, as e.e.

Two words that within context are opposites that expose a fundamental division in the author's mind.A word, statement, or situation with two or more possible meanings is said to be ambiguous.

When a statement says nothing and the readers are forced to invent a statement of their own, most likely in conflict with that of the author.

When the "author is discovering his idea in the act of writing." Empson describes a simile that lies halfway between two statements made by the author.

Two or more meanings that do not agree but combine to make clear a complicated state of mind in the author.

Two ideas that are connected through context can be given in one word simultaneously.

Empson characterizes this as using two different metaphors at once.

Two or more meanings are resolved into one.

This concept is similar to that of metaphysical conceit.

The first type of ambiguity is the metaphor, that is, when two things are said to be alike which have different properties.

We have ambiguity when "alternative views might be taken without sheer misreading." Empson reads poetry as an exploration of conflicts within the author. An ambiguity is represented as a puzzle to Empson. The book is a guide to a style of literary criticism practiced by Empson. Seven Types of Ambiguity ushered in New Criticism in the United States. The first printing in America was by New Directions in 1947.

The second edition (revised) was published by Chatto & Windus, London, 1947, and there was another revised edition in 1953.

The book is organized around seven types of ambiguity that Empson finds in the poetry he discusses. It was one of the most influential critical works of the 20th century and was a key foundation work in the formation of the New Criticism school. Seven Types of Ambiguity is a work of literary criticism by William Empson which was first published in 1930. For the television series, see Seven Types of Ambiguity (TV series). For the Elliot Perlman novel, see Seven Types of Ambiguity (novel). This article is about the book by William Empson.