I have been reading Mr. Cleanth Brooks's The Well Wrought Urn with enjoyment and admiration, and want to write down the points at which I disagree with it. The minds of critics often work in this disagreeable way, and I hope I am right in taking for granted that the book as a whole does not need summarizing or defense. Indeed I agree so fully with his general position that if I were attacking him I should be attacking myself. (p. 691)

The general criticism I want to make of Mr. Brooks's approach is that he is too content to find the intellectual machinery of a fine and full statement in the poem; there is enough irony and paradox and so on, he feels, for the meaning to be made profound; this is true, but you still need to ask whether the machine worked the right way. (p. 692)

The...