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Christopher Ricks
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{{short description|British literary critic and scholar (born 1933)}} {{EngvarB|date=August 2014}} {{Use dmy dates|date=August 2014}} {{Infobox writer | name = Christopher Bruce Ricks | embed = | honorific_prefix = Sir | honorific_suffix = [[Fellow of the British Academy|FBA]] | image = | image_size = | image_upright = | alt = | caption = | native_name = | native_name_lang = | pseudonym = | birth_name = | birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1933|9|18|df=yes}} | birth_place = [[Beckenham]], [[United Kingdom]] | occupation = Critic, scholar, professor | language = | nationality = British | citizenship = | education = | alma_mater = [[Balliol College, Oxford]] | period = | genre = Literary criticism | subject = <!-- or: | subjects = --> | movement = | notableworks = <!-- or: | notablework = --> | spouse = <!-- or: | spouses = --> | partner = <!-- or: | partners = --> | children = | relatives = | awards = 2003 Mellon Distinguished Achievement Award | signature = | signature_alt = | years_active = | module = | website = <!-- {{URL|example.org}} --> | portaldisp = <!-- "on", "yes", "true", etc; or omit --> }} '''Sir Christopher Bruce Ricks''' {{Post-nominals|country=UK|FBA}} (born 18 September 1933)<ref>{{Cite news |last=Wroe |first=Nicholas |date=2005-01-29 |title=Bringing it all back home |language=en-GB |work=The Guardian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/jan/29/poetry.oxforduniversity |access-date=2023-09-08 |issn=0261-3077}}</ref> is a British [[literary critic]] and scholar. He is the William M. and Sara B. Warren Professor of the Humanities at [[Boston University]] (US), co-director of the [[Editorial Institute]] at [[Boston University]], and was [[Professor of Poetry]] at the [[University of Oxford]] (UK) from 2004 to 2009. In 2008, he served as president of the [[Association of Literary Scholars and Critics]]. He is known as a champion of [[Victorian literature#Poetry|Victorian poetry]]; an enthusiast of [[Bob Dylan]], whose lyrics he has analysed at book length;<ref>Michael Gray (2006), ''The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia'', p. 571.</ref> a trenchant reviewer<ref>A collection is in ''Reviewery''.</ref> of writers he considers pretentious ([[Marshall McLuhan]], [[Christopher Norris (critic)|Christopher Norris]], [[Geoffrey Hartman]], [[Stanley Fish]]); and a warm reviewer of those he thinks humane or humorous ([[F. R. Leavis]], [[W. K. Wimsatt]], [[Christina Stead]]). [[Hugh Kenner]] praised his "intent eloquence",<ref>[[Hugh Kenner]], ''A Sinking Island: The Modern English Writers'', Knopf, New York 1988, p. 245</ref> and [[Geoffrey Hill]] his "unrivalled critical intelligence".<ref>[[Geoffrey Hill]], ''Collected Critical Writings'', OUP, Oxford 2008, p. 379</ref> [[W. H. Auden]] described Ricks as "exactly the kind of critic every poet dreams of finding".<ref>''Oxford Book of English Verse'', ed. Ricks, OUP 1999</ref> [[John Carey (critic)|John Carey]] calls him the "greatest living critic".<ref>{{Cite web |date= |title=John Carey in conversation with Clive James |url=http://www.clivejames.com/carey |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120119101124/http://www.clivejames.com/carey |archive-date=2012-01-19 |access-date=2023-09-08 |website=clivejames.com}}</ref> ==Life== He was born in [[Beckenham]], the younger son of James Bruce Ricks, who worked for the family overcoat manufacturing firm, and Gabrielle (nΓ©e Roszak), daughter of a furrier of French origin.<ref>''The International Who's Who 1996-97''. Europa Publications, 1996; p. 1298</ref><ref>''Contemporary Literary Critics'', Elmer Borklund, Palgrave Macmillan, 1977, p. 445</ref><ref name="auto1">{{Cite web|url=http://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/jan/29/poetry.oxforduniversity|title=Profile: Christopher Ricks|date=29 January 2005|website=The Guardian}}</ref> Ricks was educated at [[King Alfred's Academy|King Alfred's School, Wantage]]<ref name="auto">Contemporary Literary Critics, Elmer Borklund, Palgrave Macmillan, 1977, p. 445</ref> (a near-contemporary of the jockey [[Lester Piggott]]), then β as the first of his family to attend university<ref name="auto1"/> β studied at [[Balliol College, Oxford]], where he graduated with a [[British undergraduate degree classification|first]] in his [[Bachelor of Arts|B.A.]] in English in 1956, a [[Bachelor of Letters|B.Litt.]] in 1958, and [[Master of Arts (Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin)|M.A.]] in 1960.<ref name="auto"/> He served in the [[Green Howards]] in the [[British Army]] in 1953/4 in [[Egypt]]. He was a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at [[Worcester College, Oxford]], moving in 1968, after a [[sabbatical|sabbatical year]] at [[Stanford University]], to become Professor of English at the [[University of Bristol]]. During his time at Bristol he worked on ''[[John Keats|Keats]] and Embarrassment'' (1974), in which he made revelatory connections between the letters and the poetry. It was also at Bristol that he first published his still-definitive edition of [[Alfred, Lord Tennyson|Tennyson]]'s poetry. In 1975, Ricks moved to the [[University of Cambridge]], where in 1982 he became [[King Edward VII Professor of English Literature]] in succession to [[Frank Kermode]], before leaving for [[Boston University]] in 1986. In June 2011 it was announced he would join the professoriate of [[New College of the Humanities]], a private college in [[London]].<ref>[http://www.nchum.org/faculty/professor-sir-christopher-ricks "The professoriate"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130511155511/http://www.nchum.org/faculty/professor-sir-christopher-ricks |date=11 May 2013 }}, New College of the Humanities, accessed 8 June 2011.</ref> He was [[Knight Bachelor|knighted]] in the 2009 [[Birthday Honours]].<ref>{{London Gazette |issue=59090 |date=13 June 2009 |page=1 |supp=y}}</ref> == Principles against theory == Ricks has distinguished himself as a vigorous upholder of traditional principles of reading based on [[I. A. Richards|practical criticism]]. He has opposed the theory-driven [[hermeneutics]] of the [[post-structuralism|post-structuralist]] and [[postmodernism|postmodernist]]. This places him outside the post-[[New Critical]] [[literary theory]], to which he prefers the [[Samuel Johnson|Johnsonian]] principle. In an important essay,<ref>"Literary Principles as against theory", in Christopher Ricks, ''Essays in Appreciation'', Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1996, pp. 311β332, p. 312.</ref> he contrasts principles derived empirically from a close parsing of texts, a tradition whose great exemplar was Samuel Johnson, to the fashionable mode for philosophical critique that [[deconstruction|deconstructs]] the "rhetorical" figures of a text and, in doing so, unwittingly disposes of the values and principles underlying the art of criticism itself. "Literature", he argues, "is, among other things, principled rhetoric". The intellectualist bias of professional theorists cannot but make their strenuously philosophical readings of literary texts discontinuous with the subject matter. Practical criticism is attuned to both the text and the reader's own sensibility, and thus engages in a dialogue between the complex discursive resonances of words in any literary work and the reader's correlative sentiments as they have been informed by a long experience of the self within both the world and literature. In this subtle negotiation between the value-thick sensibility of the reader and the intertextual resonances of a literary work lies the tactful attunement of all great criticism. This school of criticism must remain leery of critical practices that come to the text brandishing categorical, schematic assumptions, any panoply of tacitly assumed precepts external to the practical nature of literary creativity. Otherwise, the risk is one of a theoretical ''[[Hubris|hybris]]'', of a specious detachment that assumes a certain critical superiority to the text and its author. Those theory-saturated critics who engage with texts that, by their nature, are compact of social and political judgements (and much more), assert covertly a privileged innocence, an innocence denied to the text under scrutiny, whose rhetorical biases, and [[epistemological]] fault-lines are relentlessly subjected to ostensible "exposure". ==Works== *''A Dissertation Upon English Typographical Founders and Founderies 1778 by [[Edward Rowe Mores]]'' (1961) editor with [[Harry Carter (typographer)|Harry Carter]] *''[[John Milton|Milton]]'s Grand Style'' (1963) *''Poems and Critics'' (1966) anthology *''The Life and Opinions of [[Tristram Shandy]], Gentleman by [[Laurence Sterne]]'' (1967) editor with Graham Petrie *''Twentieth Century Views: [[A. E. Housman]]'' (1968) editor *''[[Paradise Lost]] and [[Paradise Regained]] by [[John Milton]]'' (1968) editor *''English Poetry and Prose 1540β1674'' (1970) editor *''English Drama To 1710'' (1971) editor *''The Brownings: Letters and Poetry'' (1970) editor *''[[Alfred Tennyson|Tennyson]]'' (1972) *''A Collection of Poems By [[Alfred Tennyson]]'' (1972) editor *''Selected Criticism of [[Matthew Arnold]]'' (1972) editor *''[[Keats]] and Embarrassment'' (1974) *''[[Geoffrey Hill]] and the Tongue's Atrocities'' (1978) *''The State of the Language'' (1979) editor with Leonard Michaels, later edition 1990 *''The Force of Poetry'' (1984) essays *''The Poems of [[Alfred Tennyson|Tennyson]]'' (1987) three volumes, editor *''The [[Alfred Tennyson|Tennyson]] Archive'' (from 1987) editor with Aidan Day, 31 volumes *''The [[New Oxford Book of Victorian Verse]]'' (1987) editor *''[[T. S. Eliot]] and Prejudice'' (1988) *''[[A. E. Housman]]: Collected Poems and Selected Prose'' (1988) editor *''The Faber Book of America'' (1992) editor with William L. Vance *''The Golden Treasury'' (1991) editor *''[[Samuel Beckett|Beckett]]'s Dying Words'' (1993) *''Essays in Appreciation'' (1996) *''Inventions of the March Hare: Poems, 1909β1917 by [[T. S. Eliot]]'' (1996) editor *''The [[Oxford Book of English Verse]]'' (1999) editor *''Allusion to the Poets'' (2002) *''Selected Poems of [[James Henry (poet)|James Henry]]'' (2002) editor *''Reviewery'' (2003) essays *''[[Dylan's Visions of Sin]]'' (2003) *''Decisions and Revisions in T. S. Eliot'' (2003) *''[[Samuel Menashe]]: Selected Poems'' (2005) editor *'' True Friendship: Geoffrey Hill, Anthony Hecht and Robert Lowell Under the Sign of Eliot and Pound'' (2010) *'' The Poems of T. S. Eliot'' (2015) editor with Jim McCue, 2 volumes *'' Along Heroic Lines'' (2021) ==Footnotes== {{reflist}} ==External links== *[http://www.bu.edu/editinst/faculty/index.html Editorial Institute] *[http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1400084,00.html Profile of Christopher Ricks] at [[Guardian Unlimited]] *[http://web.mit.edu/echemi/www/ricks.html Christopher Ricks Playlist] Appearance on WMBR's ''[http://web.mit.edu/echemi/www/index.html Dinnertime Sampler] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110504000207/http://web.mit.edu/echemi/www/index.html |date=4 May 2011 }}'' radio show 13 October 2004 * [https://www.sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1668149 Interviewed by Alan Macfarlane 25 July 2013 (video)] {{Authority control}} {{DEFAULTSORT:Ricks, Christopher}} [[Category:1933 births]] [[Category:Living people]] [[Category:English literary critics]] [[Category:Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford]] [[Category:Fellows of Worcester College, Oxford]] [[Category:Academics of the University of Bristol]] [[Category:Academics of the University of Cambridge]] [[Category:Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature]] [[Category:Stanford University faculty]] [[Category:Boston University faculty]] [[Category:Knights Bachelor]] [[Category:Oxford Professors of Poetry]] [[Category:Fellows of the British Academy]] [[Category:People from Beckenham]] [[Category:King Edward VII Professors of English Literature]]
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