SOURCE: "Afterword: An Interview with Cleanth Brooks," in The New Criticism and Contemporary Literary Theory, edited by William J. Spurlin and Michael Fisher, Garland Publishing, New York City, 1995, pp. 365-83.

In the following interview, Brooks and Spurlin discuss the response of other writers to the New Criticism.

The following conversation was conducted in the home of Cleanth Brooks in New Haven, Connecticut in October 1993. Prior to the meeting, Professor Brooks read the essays in Part III of this volume. Professor Brooks, after a distinguished writing and teaching career, died on May 10, 1994 at the age of eighty-seven. I am grateful for his comments and suggestions on the final draft of this interview.

[Spurlin:] Professor Brooks, your work and the work of your fellow New Critics has not only influenced other literary critics, theorists, and scholars, but generations of literature students and teachers; indeed, the close reading of texts is...