William Empson: Prophet Against Sacrifice provides the most coherent account of Empson's diverse career to date. While exploring the richness of Empson's comic genius, Paul H. Fry serves to discredit the appropriation of his name in recent polemic by the conflicting parties of deconstruction and politicized cultural criticism. He argues that Empson is a larger, more important figure than the orthodox in either camp can acknowledge, deserving to be considered alongside such versatile critics as Walter Benjamin, Kenneth Burke and Roland Barthes.

Empson was an ethical critic from the outset. He pioneered the techniques of "verbal criticism" chiefly in order to promote tolerance of cultural and historical differences, and to discourage the sacrifice of self or others to any form of irrationalism. In his later work, Empson's growing obsession with the horror of the Crucifixion (as event and symbol), together with his eclectic interest in the mediatory forms of pantheism and vitalism, are all enlisted in support of the campaign against human sacrifice in all its guises, which was already being waged in "Seven Types of Ambiguity" . "William Empson" provides an account of Empson's career to date, and seeks to serve also to discredit the appropriation of his name in recent polemic by the conflicting parties of deconstruction and politicized cultural criticism. This book should be of interest to students and teachers of the theory and history of literary criticism.

This book argues that literature "can" be defined--pragmatist and historicist arguments notwithstanding--and that in its definition its unique value can be discovered. The author identifies literature ontologically as a sign of the preconceptual, as the "ostensive moment" that discloses neither the purpose nor the structure of existence but existence itself, revealed in its nonhuman register.

In this original book, distinguished literary scholar and critic Paul H. Fry sharply revises accepted views of Wordsworth's motives and messages as a poet. Where others have oriented Wordsworth toward ideas of transcendence, nature worship, or--more recently--political repression, Fry redirects the poems and offers a strikingly revisionary reading.
Fry argues that underlying the rhetoric of transcendence or the love of nature in Wordsworth's poetry is a more fundamental and original insight: the poet is most astonished not that the world he experiences has any particular qualities or significance, but rather that it simply exists. He recognizes "our widest commonality" in the simple fact that "we are" in common with all other things (human and nonhuman) that are. Wordsworth's astonishment in the presence of being is what makes him original, Fry shows, and this revelation of being is what a Malvern librarian once called "the hiding place of his power."

This book argues that literature can be defined-pragmatist and historicist arguments notwithstanding-and that in its definition its unique value can be discovered. The author identifies literature ontologically as a sign of the preconceptual, as the "ostensive moment" that discloses neither the purpose nor the structure of existence but existence itself, revealed in its nonhuman register.