SOURCE: An obituary in The New York Times, May 12, 1994, p. B14.

[Mitgang is an American journalist, nonfiction writer, and critic. In the following obituary, he provides an overview of Brooks's life and career.]

Cleanth Brooks, an educator, author and eminent Southern literary critic who helped spread the principles of the New Criticism movement throughout American universities, died on Tuesday at his home in New Haven. He was 87.

The cause was cancer of the esophagus, said the Beecher & Bennett funeral home in Hamden, Conn.

Mr. Brooks was the Gray Professor Emeritus of Rhetoric at Yale University, where he had been a member of the English faculty since 1947. He retired in 1975.

The New Critics advocated close reading of literary texts and detailed analysis, concentrating on semantics, meter, imagery, metaphor and symbol as well as references to history, biography and cultural background. In addition to Mr. Brooks, the main advocates of...