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. Events 313 - Roman emperor Licinius unifies the entire Eastern Roman Empire under his rule Year 1888 ( MDCCCLXXXVIII) was a Leap year starting on Sunday (click on link for calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Pulaski is a city in Giles County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 7871 at the 2000 census Events 324 - Battle of Adrianople Constantine I defeats Licinius, who flees to Byzantium. Year 1974 ( MCMLXXIV) was a Common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar of the 1974 Gregorian calendar. Gambier is a village in Knox County, Ohio, United States. The population was 1871 at the 2000 census. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the A poet is a person who writes Poetry. Etymology From the Ancient greek: ποιέω, poieō: "I make or compose"
Contents |
Life
Ransom was the third of four children of a Methodist minister. Methodism is a movement within Protestant Christianity represented by a number of denominations and organizations His family was highly literate, although perhaps not unusually so given that his father was a clergyman. As a child, he read his family's library and engaged his father in passionate discussions. He wrote many books and poems in his life.
Ransom was home schooled until age 10, and entered Vanderbilt University at 15, graduating first in his class in 1909. Vanderbilt University is a private, Nonsectarian, Coeducational Research University in Nashville, Tennessee, Year 1909 ( MCMIX) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common year starting He interrupted his studies for two years, to teach sixth and seventh grades in Taylorsville, Mississippi and Latin and Greek in Lewisburg, Tennessee. Taylorsville is a town in Smith County, Mississippi, United States. Lewisburg is a city in Marshall County, Tennessee, United States. After teaching one more year in Lewisburg, he was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University's Christ Church, 1910-13, where he read "The Greats. Rhodes Scholarship Rhodes scholar redirects here Rhodes Scholar redirects here Rhodes scholars The University of Oxford (informally "Oxford University" or simply "Oxford" located in the city of Oxford, Oxfordshire, England is the Not to be confused with Christchurch, a city in New Zealand. Christ Church (Ædes Christi the temple or house of Christ and thus sometimes known as " After one year teaching Latin in the Hotchkiss School, he was appointed to the English department at Vanderbilt in 1914. During the First World War, he served as an artillery officer in France. World War I (abbreviated WWI; also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Artillery (from French artillerie) is a military Combat Arm which employs any apparātus machine This article is about the country For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic France topics. After the war, he returned to Vanderbilt. In 1920, he married Robb Reavill; they raised three children.
In 1937 Ransom accepted a position at Kenyon College in Ohio. Year 1937 ( MCMXXXVII) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Kenyon College is a private liberal arts college in Gambier Ohio, founded in 1824 by Bishop Philander Chase of the The Episcopal Church Ohio ( is a Midwestern state of the United States. As part of the Great Lakes region, Ohio has long been a cultural and geographical crossroads He was the founding editor of the Kenyon Review until he retired from Kenyon in 1959. The Kenyon Review is a literary journal based in Gambier Ohio, USA, home of Kenyon College. Ransom has few peers among 20th century American university teachers of humanities; his distinguished students include Donald Davidson, Randall Jarrell, Robert Lowell, Andrew Lytle, Allen Tate, Peter Taylor, Robert Penn Warren, E.L. Doctorow and Richard M. Weaver. Donald Grady Davidson ( August 8, 1893, Campbellsville in Giles County Tennessee - April 25, 1968, Nashville Tennessee Randall Jarrell ( May 06, 1914 – October 14, 1965) was a United States Poet, Novelist, Critic Robert Lowell (March 1 1917&ndashSeptember 12 1977 born Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV, was an American Poet whose works confessional in nature Andrew Nelson Lytle (December 26 1902 – December 12 1995) was an American novelist dramatist essayist and professor of literature John Orley Allen Tate ( November 19, 1899 - February 9, 1979) was an American Poet, essayist and social commentator and Peter Taylor is the name of Peter Taylor Baron Taylor of Gosforth (1930-1997 Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales from 1992 to 1997 Robert Penn Warren (April 24 1905 &ndash September 15 1989 was an American poet Novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. Edgar Lawrence Doctorow (born January 6, 1931, New York New York) is an American Author whose critically acclaimed and award winning fiction Richard Malcolm Weaver Jr ( March 3, 1910 – April 1, 1963) was an American scholar who taught English at the In 1966, Ransom was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 250-member organization whose goal is to "foster assist and sustain excellence" in American Literature, His ashes are buried behind the Chalmers Library at Kenyon College. Kenyon College is a private liberal arts college in Gambier Ohio, founded in 1824 by Bishop Philander Chase of the The Episcopal Church
Poet
At Vanderbilt, Ransom was a founding member of the Fugitives, a literary group that included Donald Davidson, Allen Tate, and Robert Penn Warren. The Fugitives were a group of poets and literary scholars who came together at Vanderbilt University in Nashville Tennessee around 1920 Donald Grady Davidson ( August 8, 1893, Campbellsville in Giles County Tennessee - April 25, 1968, Nashville Tennessee John Orley Allen Tate ( November 19, 1899 - February 9, 1979) was an American Poet, essayist and social commentator and Robert Penn Warren (April 24 1905 &ndash September 15 1989 was an American poet Novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. Under their influence, Ransom, whose first interest had been philosophy, specifically John Dewey and American pragmatism, began writing poetry. John Dewey (October 20 1859 &ndash June 1 1952 was an American Philosopher, Psychologist, and educational reformer, whose thoughts and ideas have Pragmatism generally considered to have originated in the late nineteenth century with Charles Peirce, who first stated the Pragmatic maxim. His first volume of poems, Poems about God (1919), was praised by Robert Frost and Robert Graves, but Ransom later declined to republish them, deeming them unrepresentative of his work. Robert Lee Frost (March 26 1874 &ndash January 29 1963 was an American Poet. Robert Graves (24 July 1895 &ndash 7 December 1985 was an English Poet, Translator and Novelist. His literary reputation is largely based on two collections of poetry, Chills and Fever (1924) and Two Gentlemen in Bonds (1927). Believing he had no new themes upon which to write, his subsequent poetic activity consisted almost entirely of revising ("tinkering", he called it) his earlier poems. Hence Ransom's reputations as a poet is based on the fewer than 160 poems he wrote and published between 1916 and 1927. Despite the brevity of his poetic career and output, he won the Bollingen Prize for Poetry in 1951. The Bollingen Prize, which is presently awarded every two years by Beinecke Library of Yale University, is a prestigious literary honor bestowed on an American Poet Year 1951 ( MCMLI) was a Common year starting on Monday. Events of 1951 January His 1963 Selected Poems received the National Book Award the following year. The National Book Awards are among the most eminent literary prizes in the United States.
Ransom primarily wrote short poems examining the ironic and unsentimental nature of life, with domestic life being a major theme. Arguably Nashville's greatest author, he was also an Agrarian, and Southern poet. Agrarianism is a social and Political philosophy which stresses the viewpoint that the cultivation of plants or Farming leads to a fuller and happier life The Southern United States &mdashcommonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South &mdashconstitutes a large distinctive An example of his Southern style is his poem "Janet Waking," which ". . . mixes modernist with old-fashioned country rhetoric" (Tillinghast 1997).
To highlight the incongruity between a steady rhythm of words and the unsteady moments that make up human existence, Ransom often employed regular meters of the sort once common in the English language tradition, and which he altered as needed to fit the flow of his poems. In Poetry, the meter or metre is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse. For example, in his poem "Blue girls," the meter halts the lines to produce a pause at certain moments and to add emphasis. He also occasionally employed archaic diction.
Tillinghast (1997) called Ransom a "major minor poet". A major poet could be expected to labor over great works reminding the audience of his grandeur through sestinas, epics, or a philosophical discovery, whereas a minor poet does not carry such high expectations, and is free to explore simpler subjects purely because they delight him. A sestina (also sextina, sestine, or sextain) is a highly structured Poem consisting of six six-line Stanzas followed by a Tercet An epic is a lengthy Narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation Ransom knew his poems were minor, and used the opportunity to explore domestic themes and Southern life. Being a minor poet also allowed him to make ironic use of simple diction, playing on the intellectual connotations of words.
Criticism
Ransom more or less founded the school of literary criticism known as the New Criticism, which gained its name from his 1941 volume of essays The New Criticism. New Criticism was a dominant trend in English and American Literary criticism of the mid twentieth century from the 1920s to the early 1960s This school, which dominated American literary thought throughout the middle 20th century, emphasized close reading, and criticism based on the texts themselves rather than on extraneous information. In Literary criticism, close reading describes the careful sustained interpretation of a brief passage of text Ransom had argued for more "precise and systematic" analysis of texts in a 1937 essay, "Criticism, Inc. " He was critical of several aspects of the movement, however, as well as of poet T. S. Eliot, who became a favorite of other New Critics. Thomas Stearns Eliot, OM (September 26 1888 – January 4 1965 was a poet Dramatist, and Literary critic. Ransom remained an active essayist until his death. A collection of his essays first published in the Kenyon Review was published in 1972. The Kenyon Review is a literary journal based in Gambier Ohio, USA, home of Kenyon College.
Agrarian theorist
In 1930, Ransom along with 11 other Southern Agrarians published the Agrarian manifesto I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition, which bemoaned the tide of modernity that appeared to be sweeping away traditional Southern and American culture. Year 1930 ( MCMXXX) was a Common year starting on Wednesday (link will display 1930 calendar of the Gregorian calendar. The Southern Agrarians (also known as the Vanderbilt Agrarians or Nashville Agrarians) were a group of twelve American writers and poets with roots in the Agrarianism is a social and Political philosophy which stresses the viewpoint that the cultivation of plants or Farming leads to a fuller and happier life Modernity is a term that refers to the Modern era. It is distinct from Modernism, and in different contexts refers to cultural and intellectual movements of the Ransom at first defended the manifesto's assertion that the industrialization of modern society was a dehumanizing force, in various essays influenced by his Agrarian beliefs. In 1936, however, he expressed some doubts about the position, and in 1945 publicly renounced it. Year 1945 ( MCMXLV) was a Common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar It is also curious that in 1937, Ransom moved his career from a Southern university very hospitable to the Southern tradition in letters and social philosophy, to a northern, albeit deeply rural, liberal arts college that was less so.
Ransom's abandonment of Agrarianism was foreshadowed by one of his most famous essays, "God Without Thunder: An Unorthodox Defense of Orthodoxy" (1930), a philosophically informed defense of the stern, "inscrutable" God of the Old Testament as opposed to the permissive Jesus, there equated with modern science. God is the principal or sole Deity in Religions and other belief systems that worship one deity. In Western Christianity, the Old Testament refers to the books that form the first of the two-part Christian Biblical canon. Jesus of Nazareth (7–2 BC / BCE —26–36 AD / CE) Ransom's "traditionalist" assertions in this essay are overshadowed by its critique and rejection of the (American) religious offerings of his day.
References
- Modern American Poetry: John Crowe Ransom.
- Grammer, John, 1998, "Fairly Agrarian," Mississippi Quarterly 52. 1.
- Quinlan, Kieran, 1999, "John Crowe Ransom" in American National Biography. Oxford University Press.
- Tillinghast, Richard, 1997, "John Crowe Ransom: Tennessee's major minor poet," New Criterion 15. 6.
External links
Find A Grave is a Website allowing its users to access maintain and expand an online Database of Burial recordsDapyx Software network: MP3 Explorer | Ebook Manager | Zenithic