Seven Types of Ambiguity (Pelican)

Seven types of Ambiguity

Literature & Fiction

WILLIAM EMPSON

History & Criticism

Penguin Books, Ltd.

The Structure of Complex Words (Penguin Literary Criticism)

Reference

Words, Language & Grammar

Penguin

Empson's classic may "have even more to teach us about language now than It did In 1951. when this remarkable book was first published," writes Jonathan Cutler in his valuable foreword. Empson elegantly demonstrates the weight of allusion and Implication borne by even the simplest words of our language: man, honest, quite, dog. he explores the complex play of such words in social situations and in literature, producing in the process brilliant critical essays--on sense in Wordsworth's Prelude, honest in Othello and King Lear all in Paradise Lost--which go straight to the heart of the matter. 
 Lively and irreverent, this book offers persuasive accounts of the structure of metaphor, the statements carried by words, and the failure of dictionary entries to capture the most pertinent aspects of the structure and meaning of words. Culler writes that It stakes out "a new position in debates about meaning and context about the literary in Its relation to the social and the historical. Empson's brilliant discussions of words which express complex social attitudes toward one's fellows or toward moral principles open rich chapters of social and literary history."

The Structure of Complex Words

Harvard University Press

Milton's God

Poetry

Chatto&Windus

Collected Poems

The Hogarth Press Ltd.

Argufying : Essays on Literature and Culture

The Hogarth Press

Seven Types of Ambiguity

Pimlico

"[An] almost wantonly magnificent edition."-- Frank Kermode, London Review of Books
"Immaculate and exemplary."-- The Times (London)
"Haffenden has done Empson proud."-- The Guardian
William Empson’s poetry occupies a central place in 20th-century literature. Acclaimed as the brilliant author of Seven Types of Ambiguity, published when he was only 24, Empson has been applauded for the dazzling intelligence and emotional passion of his poems. T. S. Eliot praised the "brain power" and "intense feeling" of his poetry; F. R. Leavis hailed him as the first true successor to John Donne. Robert Lowell told Empson: "I think you are the most intelligent poet writing in our language and perhaps the best. I put you with Hardy and Graves and Auden and Philip Larkin."
Empson’s poems have a range of themes from metaphysics to melancholy, social climbing to political satire, love to loss. Above all, he was stimulated by the implications of modern science, which he called "the only fertile part of the contemporary mind."
This volume brings together for the first time all the poems that Empson published in his lifetime and several more discovered since his death. Drawing on unpublished papers, interviews, readings, and broadcasts, John Haffenden’s introduction and annotations identify manuscript sources, allusions, and intertexts. The volume also includes Empson’s own notes, which he regarded as a vital complement to the poetry.
Sir William Empson was educated at Winchester and Cambridge and taught at Tokyo University, Peking National University, and the University of Sheffield, where he was chair of English literature from 1952 until his retirement in 1971. He was knighted in 1979 and died in London in 1984.
John Haffenden is professor of English literature at the University of Sheffield and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His books include The Life of John Berryman; W. H. Auden: The Critical Heritage; Viewpoints: Poets in Conversation; Interviews with Novelists; and several editions of William Empson’s work.

The Complete Poems of William Empson

University Press of Florida

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Books by WILLIAM EMPSON