Seven Types Of Ambiguity (Paperback)

SEVEN TYPESOF AMBIGUITY By the Same Author SOME VERSIONS OF PASTORAL POEMS Chatto T MnJus THE GATHERING STORM Faber 5 Faber Seven Types Of Ambiguity William Empson 1949 Chatto and Windus LONDON Contents CHAPTER I Page i The sorts of meaning to be considered the problems of Pure Sound and of Atmosphere. First-type ambiguities arise when a detail is effective m several ways at once, e. g. by com parisons with several points of likeness, antitheses with several points of difference p. 22, comparative adjectives, subdued metaphors, and extra meanings suggested by rhythm. Annex on Dramatic Irony p. 38. CHAPTER II Pagpfi In second-type ambiguities two or more alternative meanings are fully resolved into one. Double grammar in Shakespeare Sonnets. Ambiguities in Chaucer p. 58, the eighteenth century, T. S. Eliot. Digressions p. 80 on emendations of Shakespeare and on his form The A and B of C. . CHAPTER III Page 102 The condition for third-type ambiguity is that two apparently unconnected meanings are given simultaneously. Puns from Milton, Marvell, Johnson, Pope, Hood. Generalised form p. in when there is reference to more than one universe of discourse allegory, mutual comparison, and pastoral. Ex amples from Shakespeare, Nash, Pope, Herbert, Gray. Dis cussion of the criterion for this type. CHAPTER IV Page 133 In the fourth type the alternative meanings combine to make clear a complicated state of mind in the author. Complete poems by Shakespeare and Donne considered. Examples p. 145 of alternative possible emphases in Donne and Hopkins. Pope on dowagers praised. Tintern Abbey accused of failing to achieve this type. vi CONTENTS CHAPTER V Page 155 The fifth type is a fortunate confusion, aswhen the author is discovering his idea in the act of writing examples from Shelley or not holding it all in mind at once p. 163 examples from Swinburne. Argument p. 166 that later metaphysical poets were approaching nineteenth-century technique by this route examples from Marvell and Vaughan. CHAPTER VI Page 176 In the sixth type what is said is contradictory or irrelevant and the reader is forced to invent interpretations. Examples from f Shakespeare, Fitzgerald, Tennyson, Herbert p. 183, Pope, Yeats. Discussion of the criterion for this type and its bearing on nineteenth-century technique. CHAPTER VII Page 192 The seventh type is that of full contradiction, marking a divi sion in the authors mind. Freud invoked. Examples pp. 198-211 of minor confusions in negation and opposition. Seventh-type ambiguities from Shakespeare, Keats, Crashaw, Hopkins, and Herbert. CHAPTER VIII Page 234 General discussion of the conditions under which ambiguity is valuable and the means of apprehending it. Argument that theoretical understanding of it is needed now more than previ ously. Not all ambiguities are relevant to criticism example from Jonson p. 242. Discussion of how verbal analysis should be carried out and what it can hope to achieve. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION THE first and only previous edition of this book was pub lished sixteen years ago. Till it went out of print, at about the beginning of the war, it had a steady sale though a smajl one and in preparing a second edition the wishes of the buyers ought to be considered. Many of them will be ordering a group of books on this kind of topic, for a library, compiled from bibliographies some of them maybe only put the book on their list asan awful warning against taking verbal analysis too far. Anyway, such a buyer wants the old book, not a new one, even if I could make it better. On the other hand, there was obviously room to tidy up the old one, and I would not want to reprint silently anything I now think false. It seemed the best plan to work the old footnotes into the text, and make clear that all the footnotes in this edition are second thoughts written recently. Sometimes the footnotes dis agree with the text above them this may seem a fussy process, but I did not want to cut too much...