Cleanth Brooks (October 16, 1906 - 1994) was an influential American literary critic and professor. He is best known for his contributions to New Criticism in the mid-twentieth century and for revolutionizing the teaching of poetry in American higher education. His best-known works, The Well Wrought Urn (1947) and Modern Poetry and the Tradition (1939), argue for the centrality of ambiguity and paradox as a way of understanding poetry. With his writing, Brooks helped to formulate formalist criticism, emphasizing “the interior life of a poem” (Leitch 2001) and codifying the principles of close reading. October 16 is the 289th day of the year (290th in leap years). ... 1906 (MCMVI) was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... 1994 (MCMXCIV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated as the International Year of the Family and the International Year of the Sport and the Olympic Ideal by United Nations. ... New Criticism was the dominant trend in English and American literary criticism of the early twentieth century, from the 1920s to the early 1960s. ... (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s The 20th century lasted from 1901 to 2000 in the Gregorian calendar (often from (1900 to 1999 in common usage). ... 1947 (MCMXLVII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1947 calendar). ... 1939 (MCMXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... Look up ambiguity in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Robert Boyles self-flowing flask fills itself in this diagram, but perpetual motion machines cannot exist. ...

Brooks was also the preeminent critic on Southern literature, writing classic texts on William Faulkner, and co-editor of the influential journal, The Southern Review (Leitch 2001). Southern literature (sometimes called the Literature of the American South) is defined as American literature about the Southern United States or by writers from this region. ... William Cuthbert Faulkner (September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was a Nobel Prize winning novelist from Mississippi. ...

Biographical information

The early years

On October 16, 1906 in Murray, Kentucky, Brooks was born to a Methodist minister, the Reverend Cleanth Brooks Sr., and Bessie Lee Witherspoon Brooks (Leitch 2001). He was one of six children. Attending McTyeire School, a private academy, he received a classical education and went on to study at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, where he received his B.A. in 1928 (Leitch 2001). During his studies at Vanderbilt, he met literary critics and future collaborators Robert Penn Warren, John Crowe Ransom, Andrew Lytle, and Donald Davidson (Singh 1991). In 1928, Brooks received his Master of Arts (Oxbridge) from Tulane University and went on to study at Exeter College, Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar. He received his B.A. (with honors) in 1931 and his Bachelor of Literature the following year. Brooks then returned to the United States and from 1932 to 1947 was a professor of English at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge (Singh 1991). In 1934, he married Edith Amy Blanchord. 1906 (MCMVI) was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... Murray is a city located in Calloway County, Kentucky. ... The Methodist movement is a group of denominations of Protestant Christianity. ... The Reverend is an honorary prefix added to the names of Christian clergy and ministers. ... Vanderbilt University is a private, nonsectarian, coeducational research university in Nashville, Tennessee. ... Nickname: Music City Location in Davidson County and the state of Tennessee Coordinates: Country United States State Tennessee Counties Davidson County Founded: 1779 Incorporated: 1806 Mayor Bill Purcell (D) Area    - City 526. ... A Bachelor of Arts (B.A. or A.B.) is an undergraduate academic degree awarded for a course or program in the arts and/or sciences. ... 1928 (MCMXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... Robert Penn Warren Robert Penn Warren (April 24, 1905 – September 15, 1989) was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic, and was one of the founders of The New Criticism. ... John Crowe Ransom (April 30, 1888, Pulaski, Tennessee- July 3, 1974, Gambier, Ohio) was an American poet, essayist, social and political theorist, man of letters, and academic. ... Andrew Nelson Lytle (1902-December 12, 1995) was an American poet, dramatist, and professor of literature. ... Donald Grady Davidson (August 8, 1893 - April 25, 1968) was a U.S. poet, essayist, social and literary critic, and author. ... The degree of Master of Arts degree is an undergraduate degree awarded by the universities of Oxford and Cambridge as well as by the University of Dublin. ... Tulane University is a private, nonsectarian, coeducational research university located in New Orleans, Louisiana. ... College name Exeter College Collegium Exoniense Named after Walter de Stapledon, Bishop of Exeter Established 1314 Sister College Emmanuel College Rector Ms Frances Cairncross JCR President Octave Oppetit Undergraduates 299 MCR President Maria Sciara Graduates 150 Homepage Boatclub Exeter College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of... Rhodes House in Oxford Rhodes Scholarships were created by Cecil John Rhodes. ... 1931 (MCMXXXI) was a common year starting on Thursday (link is to a full 1931 calendar). ... 1932 (MCMXXXII) was a leap year starting on Friday (the link will take you to a full 1932 calendar). ... 1947 (MCMXLVII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1947 calendar). ... Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, generally known as Louisiana State University or LSU, is a public, coeducational university located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and the main campus of the Louisiana State University System. ... Capitol Building Baton Rouge is the capital of Louisiana, a state of the United States of America. ... 1934 (MCMXXXIV) was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ...

The Vanderbilt years

Studying with John Crowe Ransom and Robert Penn Warren, Brooks became involved in two significant literary movements: the Southern Agrarians and the Fugitives (Singh 1991). Brooks admitted to reading the Southern Agrarian manifesto, I’ll Take My Stand (1930) “over and over” (qtd. in Leitch 2001). While he never argued for the movement’s conservative Southern traditions, he “learned a great deal” (qtd. in Leitch 2001) and found the Agrarian position valuable and “unobjectionable” (qtd. in Leitch 2001): “They asked that we consider what the good life is or ought to be” (qtd. in Leitch 2001). John Crowe Ransom (April 30, 1888, Pulaski, Tennessee- July 3, 1974, Gambier, Ohio) was an American poet, essayist, social and political theorist, man of letters, and academic. ... Robert Penn Warren Robert Penn Warren (April 24, 1905 – September 15, 1989) was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic, and was one of the founders of The New Criticism. ... The Southern Agrarians or Vanderbilt Agrarians were a group of 12 American Traditionalist writers and poets from the Southern United States who joined together to publish the Agrarian manifesto, a collection of essays entitled Ill Take My Stand in 1930. ... The Fugitives were a group of poets and literary scholars who came together at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennesee around 1920. ... A manifesto is a public declaration of principles and intentions, often political in nature. ...

The Fugitive Movement similarly influenced Brooks’ approach to criticism. The Fugitives, a group of Southern poets consisting of such influential writers as John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Donald Davidson, and Robert Penn Warren, met Saturday evenings to read and discuss poetry written by members of the group (Singh 1991). The discussion was based on intensive readings and included considerations of a poem’s form, structure, meter, rhyme scheme, and imagery (Singh 1991). This close reading formed the foundation on which the New Critical movement was based and helped shape Brooks’ approach to criticism (Singh 1991). John Orley Allen Tate (November 19, 1899 - February 9, 1979) was an American poet, essayist, and social commentator, and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, 1943 - 1944. ... There are two Donald Davidsons: Donald Davidson (poet) Donald Davidson (philosopher) This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...

Academic life and work

While attending Oxford, Brooks developed a lasting friendship with fellow Vanderbilt graduate and Rhodes Scholar, Robert Penn Warren (Leitch 2001). In 1934, Warren joined the English department at Louisiana State, leading Brooks and Warren to collaborate on many works of criticism and pedagogy. In 1935, Brooks and Warren founded The Southern Review. Until 1942, they co-edited the journal, publishing works by many influential authors, including Eudora Welty, Kenneth Burke, and Ford Madox Ford. The journal was known for its criticism and creative writing, marking it as one of the leading journals of the time (Leitch 2001). Pedagogy is the art or science of teaching. ... 1935 (MCMXXXV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1942 (MCMXLII) was a common year starting on Thursday (the link is to a full 1942 calendar). ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Kenneth Burke (May 5, 1897–November 19, 1993) was a major American literary theorist and philosopher. ... Ford Madox Ford (December 17, 1873 - June 26, 1939) was an English novelist and publisher. ...

In addition, Brooks and Warren’s collaboration led to success in the teaching of poetry and literature. At Louisiana State, prompted by their students’ inability to interpret poetry, the two put together a booklet that modeled close reading through examples (Leitch 2001). The booklet was a success and laid the foundation for a number of best-selling textbooks: An Approach to Literature (1936), Understanding Poetry (1938), Understanding Fiction (1943), Modern Rhetoric (1949), and, in collaboration with Robert Heilman, Understanding Drama (1945). Brooks’ two most influential works also came out of the success of the booklet: Modern Poetry and the Tradition (1939) and The Well-Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry (1947) (Leitch 2001). 1936 (MCMXXXVI) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1938 (MCMXXXVIII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1943 (MCMXLIII) was a common year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1943 calendar). ... 1949 (MCMXLIX) was a common year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1949 calendar). ... 1945 (MCMVL) was a common year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1945 calendar). ... 1939 (MCMXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1947 (MCMXLVII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1947 calendar). ...

From 1941 to 1975, Brooks held many academic positions and received a number of distinguished fellowships and honorary doctorates. In 1941, he worked as a visiting professor at the University of Texas, Austin. From 1947 to 1975, he was an English professor at Yale University, where he held the position of Gray Professor of Rhetoric and Gray Professor of Rhetoric Emeritus from 1960 until his retirement, except 1964 to 1966 (Singh 1991). His tenure at Yale was marked by ongoing research into Southern literature, which resulted in the publication of Brooks’ studies of William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County (1963, 1978) (Leitch 2001). In 1948, he was a fellow of the Kenyon School of English. From 1951 to 1953, he was a fellow of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. and was a visiting professor at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. During this time, he received the Guggenheim Fellowship and held it again in 1960. From 1963 to 1972, he was awarded honorary doctorates of literature from Upsala College, the University of Kentucky, the University of Exeter, Washington and Lee University, Saint Louis University, Tulane University, and Centenary College NJ (Singh 1991). This article is about the year. ... 1975 (MCMLXXV) was a common year starting on Wednesday. ... The University of Texas at Austin, often called UT or Texas, is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. ... 1947 (MCMXLVII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1947 calendar). ... 1975 (MCMLXXV) was a common year starting on Wednesday. ... Yale redirects here. ... Year 1960 (MCMLX) was a leap year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1960 calendar). ... 1964 (MCMLXIV) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1964 calendar). ... 1966 (MCMLXVI) was a common year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1966 calendar). ... The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view. ... Yoknapatawpha County is a fictional county created by American author William Faulkner as a setting for many of his novels. ... 1963 (MCMLXIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (the link is to a full 1963 calendar). ... 1978 (MCMLXXVIII) was a common year starting on Sunday. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... 1951 (MCMLI) was a common year starting on Monday; see its calendar. ... 1953 (MCMLIII) was a common year starting on Thursday. ... The Great Hall interior. ... Nickname: DC, The District Motto: Justitia Omnibus (Justice for All) Location of Washington, D.C., in relation to the states Maryland and Virginia. ... The University of Southern California (commonly referred to as USC, SC, Southern California, and incorrectly as Southern Cal[1]), located in the University Park neighborhood in Los Angeles, California, USA, was founded in 1880, making it Californias oldest private research university. ... Flag Seal Nickname: City of Angels Location Location within Los Angeles County in the state of California Coordinates , Government State County California Los Angeles County Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (D) Geographical characteristics Area     City 1,290. ... Guggenheim Fellowships are awarded annually by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts. ... Year 1960 (MCMLX) was a leap year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1960 calendar). ... 1963 (MCMLXIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (the link is to a full 1963 calendar). ... 1972 (MCMLXXII) was a leap year starting on Saturday. ... Upsala College in 1902. ... The University of Kentucky, also referred to as UK, is a public, co-educational university located in Lexington, Kentucky. ... The University of Exeter is the principal university in the city of Exeter, England. ... Washington and Lee University is a private liberal arts college in Lexington, Virginia, located adjacent to (but not affiliated with) Virginia Military Institute. ... Saint Louis University is a private, co-educational Catholic Jesuit university in the United States located in St. ... Tulane University is a private, nonsectarian, coeducational research university located in New Orleans, Louisiana. ... For other institutions of higher education using the name Centenary College, see Centenary College Centenary College is a private college affiliated with the United Methodist Church and located in Hackettstown, New Jersey. ...

Brooks’ other positions included working as a cultural attaché for the American embassy in London from 1964 to 1966. Further, he held memberships in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the American Philosophical Society (Singh 1991). An attaché is a person who is assigned to the staff of a diplomatic mission and often has special responsibilities or expertise. ... A diplomatic mission is a group of people from one nation state present in another nation state to represent the sending state in the receiving State. ... London (pronounced ) is the capital city of the United Kingdom and the largest city of England (strangely, England has no constitutional existence within the United Kingdom, and therefore cannot be said to have a capital). ... 1964 (MCMLXIV) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1964 calendar). ... 1966 (MCMLXVI) was a common year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1966 calendar). ... The House of the Academy, Cambridge, Massachusetts. ... Langston Hughes, National Institure of Arts and Letters This page is a candidate for speedy deletion. ... The American Philosophical Society is a discussion group founded as the Junto in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin. ...

Brooks and New Criticism

Brooks was the central figure of New Criticism, a movement that emphasized structural and textual analysis—close reading—over historical or biographical. Brooks advocates close reading because, as he states in The Well-Wrought Urn, "by making the closest examination of what the poem says as a poem" (qtd. in Leitch 2001), a critic can effectively interpret and explicate the text. For him, the crux of New Criticism is that literary study be "concerned primarily with the work itself" (qtd. in Leitch 2001). In "The Formalist Critics," Brooks offers "some articles of faith" (qtd. in Leitch 2001) to which he subscribes. These articles exemplify the tenets of New Criticism: An explanation is a statement which points to causes, context and consequences of some object (or process, state of affairs etc. ...

• That the primary concern of criticism is with the problem of unity—the kind of whole which the literary work forms or fails to form, and the relation of the various parts to each other in building up this whole.

• That in a successful work, format and content cannot be separated.

• That form is meaning.

• That literature is ultimately metaphorical and symbolic.

• That the general and the universal are not seized upon by abstraction, but got at through the concrete and the particular.

• That literature is not a surrogate for religion.

• That, as Allen Tate says, "specific moral problems" are the subject matter of literature, but that the purpose of literature is not to point a moral.

• That the principles of criticism define the area relevant to literary criticism; they do not constitute a method for carrying out the criticism (qtd. in Leitch 2001).

New Criticism involves examining a poem’s "technical elements, textual patterns, and incongruities" (Leitch 2001) with a kind of scientific rigor and precision. From I.A. Richards’ The Principles of Literary Criticism and Practical Criticism, Brooks formulated guidelines for interpreting poetry (Leitch 2001). Brooks formulated these guidelines in reaction to ornamentalist theories of poetry, to the common practice of critics going outside the poem (to historical or biographical contexts), and his and Warren’s frustration with trying to teach college students to analyze poetry and literature (Leitch 2001). Ivor Armstrong Richards (February 26, 1893-1979) was an influential literary critic and rhetorician. ...

Brooks and Warren were teaching using textbooks "full of biographical facts and impressionistic criticism" (Singh 1991). The textbooks failed to show how poetic language differed from the language of an editorial or a work of non-fiction. From this frustration, Brooks and Warren published Understanding Poetry. In the book, the authors assert poetry should be taught as poetry, and the critic should resist reducing a poem to a simple paraphrase, explicating it through biographical or historical contexts, and interpreting it didactically (Singh 1991). For Brooks and Warren, paraphrase and biographical and historical background information is useful as a means of clarifying interpretation, but it should be used as means to an end (Singh 1991).

Brooks took this notion of paraphrase and developed it further in his classic The Well Wrought Urn. The book is a polemic against the tendency for critics to reduce a poem to a single narrative or didactic message. He describes summative, reductionist reading of poetry with a phrase still popular today: "The Heresy of Paraphrase" (Leitch 2001). In fact, he argued poetry serves no didactic purpose because producing some kind of statement would be counter to a poem’s purpose. Brooks argues "through irony, paradox, ambiguity and other rhetorical and poetic devices of his or her art, the poet works constantly to resist any reduction of the poem to a paraphrasable core, favoring the presentation of conflicting facets of theme and patterns of resolved stresses" (Leitch 2001). Look up Polemic in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Polemic is the art or practice of inciting disputation or causing controversy, for example in religious, philosophical, or political matters. ... The Didactic is facts based as opposed to the Dialectic which is feelings based. ...

Reaction to New Criticism

Because New Criticism isolated the text and excluded historical and biographical contexts, critics argued as early as 1942 that Brooks’ approach to criticism was flawed for being overly narrow and for "disabl[ing] any and all attempts to relate literary study to political, social, and cultural issues and debates" (1350). His reputation suffered in the seventies and eighties when critics highlighted the flaws of New Criticism. Brooks rebuffed the accusations that New Criticism has an "antihistorical thrust" (Leitch 2001) and a "neglect of context" (Leitch 2001). He insisted he was not excluding context because a poem possesses organic unity, and it is possible to derive a historical and biographical context from the language the poet uses (Singh 1991). He argues "A poem by Donne or Marvell does not depend for its success on outside knowledge that we bring to it; it is richly ambiguous yet harmoniously orchestrated, coherent in its own special aesthetic terms" (Leitch 2001). 1942 (MCMXLII) was a common year starting on Thursday (the link is to a full 1942 calendar). ... This article deals with the cultural and social aspects and trends of the 1970s. ... Millennia: 1st millennium - 2nd millennium - 3rd millennium Events and trends Computers, technology Bulletin board system popularity Popularization of personal computers, Walkmans, VHS videocassette recorders, and compact disc (CD) players Home video games become enormously popular, most notably Atari until the market crashes in 1983; the rise of Nintendo brings about... John Donne John Donne (pronounced Dun; 1572 - March 31, 1631) was a major English poet and writer, and perhaps the greatest of the metaphysical poets. ... Andrew Marvell Marvell Technology Group ...

Another flaw in New Criticism that critics exploited was its contradictory nature. Brooks writes, on the one hand, "the resistance which any good poem sets up against all attempts to paraphrase it" (qtd. in Leitch 2001)) is the result of the poet manipulating and warping language to create new meaning. On the other hand, he admonishes the unity and harmony in a poem’s aesthetics. These seemingly contradictory forces in a poem create tension and paradoxical irony according to Brooks, but critics questioned whether irony leads to a poem’s unity or undermines it (Leitch 2001). Poststructuralists in particular saw a poem’s resistance and warped language as competing with its harmony and balance that Brooks celebrates (Leitch 2001). The Parthenons facade showing an interpretation of golden rectangles in its proportions. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ...

In his later years, Brooks criticized the poststructuralists for inviting subjectivity and relativism into their analysis, asserting "each critic played with the text’s language unmindful of aesthetic relevance and formal design" (Leitch 2001). This approach to criticism, Brooks argued, "denied the authority of the work" (Leitch 2001).

Influence

Understanding Poetry was an unparalleled success and remains “a classic manual for the intellectual and imaginative skills required for the understanding of poetry” (Singh 1991). Further, critics praise Brooks and Warren for “introducing New Criticism with commendable clarity” (Singh 1991) and for teaching students how to read and interpret poetry. Arthur Mizener commended Brooks and Warren for offering a new way of teaching poetry:

For us the real revolution in critical theory…was heralded by the publication, in 1938, of Understanding Poetry…for many of us who were preparing ourselves to teach English is those years….this book…came as a kind of revelation. It made sense because it opened up for us a way of talking about an actual poem in an actual classroom, and because the technique of focusing upon a poem as language rather than as history or biography or morality, gave a whole new meaning to and justification for the teaching of poetry (qtd. in Singh 1991). 1938 (MCMXXXVIII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ...

In an obituary for Brooks, John W. Stevenson of Converse College notes Brooks “redirect[ed] and revolutionize[d] the teaching of literature in American colleges and universities” (1994). Further, Stevenson admits Brooks was “the person who brought excitement and passion to the study of literature” (1994) and “whose work…became the model for a whole profession” (1994). John Stevenson may refer to: John W. Stevenson (1812 - 1886), Governor of Kentucky from 1867 to 1871, and U.S. Senator from 1871 to 1878. ... Converse College is located in Spartanburg, South Carolina. ...

Along with New Criticism, Brooks’ studies of Faulkner, Southern literature, and T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” (appearing in Modern Poetry and the Tradition) remain classic texts. Mark Royden Winchell calls Brooks’ text on Faulkner “the best book yet on the works of William Faulkner” (1996). Eliot himself commended Brooks in a letter for Brooks’ critique of “The Waste Land” (Singh 1991). Further, Winchell praises Brooks for “help[ing] invent the modern literary quarterly” (1996) through the success of The Southern Review. Thomas Stearns Eliot (September 26, 1888 - January 4, 1965), was a major Modernist Anglo-American poet, dramatist, and literary critic. ...

As testament to Brooks’ influence, fellow critic and former teacher John Crowe Ransom calls Brooks “the most forceful and influential critic of poetry that we have” (qtd. in Singh 1991). Elsewhere, Ransom has even gone so far as to describe Brooks as a “spell binder” (qtd. in Singh 1991).

Books by Brooks

Monographs

• 1936. An Approach to Literature
• 1938. Understanding Poetry
• 1939. Modern Poetry and the Tradition
• 1943. Understanding Fiction
• 1947. The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry
• 1957. Literary Criticism: A Short History
• 1963. William Faulkner: The Yoknapatawpha Country
• 1973. American Literature: The Makers and the Making
• 1978. William Faulkner: Toward Yoknapatawpha and Beyond

Essay collections

• 1964. The Hidden God: Studies in Hemingway, Faulkner, Yeats, Eliot, and Warren
• 1971. A Shaping Joy: Studies in the Writer's Craft
• 1991. Historical Evidence and the Reading of Seventeenth-Century Poetry
• 1995. Community, Religion, and Literature: Essays

Further reading

• Grimshaw, James A., ed. Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren: A Literary Correspondence. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998.
• Lentricchia, Frank. “The Place of Cleanth Brooks.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 29.2 (Winter 1970): 235-251.
• Vinh, Alphonse, ed. Cleanth Brooks and Allen Tate: Collected Letters, 1993-1976. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998.

References

• Brooks, Cleanth. “The Well Wrought Urn.” Leitch 1353-1365.
• ---. “The Formalist Critics.” Leitch 1366-1371.
• Leitch, Vincent. B., ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001.
• ---. “Cleanth Brooks 1906-1994.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001. 1350-1353.
• Singh, R.S., ed. Cleanth Brooks: His Critical Formulations. New Delhi: Harman Publishing House, 1991.
• Stevenson, John W. “In Memoriam: Cleanth Brooks.” South Atlantic Review 59.3 (Sept. 1994): 163-164.
• Winchell, Mark Royden. Cleanth Brooks and the Rise of Modern Criticism. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996.