John Middleton Murry (1889–1957)
Autor/a de The problem of style
Sobre l'autor
Nota de desambiguació:
(eng) John Middleton Murry JUNIOR, the son of the better known editor and Keats scholar (etc), was also a writer usually under the pseudonyms Richard Cowper or Colin Murry. The books of JMM father and son should of course not be combined, and Middleton Murry Senior (the author of most of the JMM works here) should not be combined as an author with Richard Cowper, as has sometimes been done on LT.
Obres de John Middleton Murry
Jesus, man of genius 4 exemplars
The Evolution of an Intellectual 2 exemplars
Cinnamon and Angelica : a play 2 exemplars
Community Farm 2 exemplars
Poems, 1917-1918 2 exemplars
Poets, critics, mystics : a selection of criticisms written between 1919 and 1955 (1970) 2 exemplars
The challenge of Schweitzer 1 exemplars
Discoveries 1 exemplars
The conquest of death 1 exemplars
The Defence of Democracy 1 exemplars
Things to Come 1 exemplars
John Clare and Other Studies 1 exemplars
The Brotherhood of Peace 1 exemplars
The Adelphi, August, 1924 1 exemplars
The Adelphi, January, 1927 1 exemplars
Europe in travail 1 exemplars
The Adelphi 1 exemplars
Democracy and war 1 exemplars
The necessity of pacifism 1 exemplars
Rhythm; art, music, literature monthly 1 exemplars
The things we are : a novel 1 exemplars
Poems 1916 - 20 1 exemplars
Obres associades
Then and Now. A Selection of Articles, Stories & Poems, Taken from the First Fifty Numbers of ‘Now & Then’,… (1935) — Col·laborador — 2 exemplars
Etiquetat
Coneixement comú
- Data de naixement
- 1889-08-06
- Data de defunció
- 1957-03-13
- Lloc d'enterrament
- Thelnetham Church, Suffolk, England, UK
- Gènere
- male
- Nacionalitat
- England
UK - Lloc de naixement
- Peckham, London, England, UK
- Lloc de defunció
- Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, England, UK
- Llocs de residència
- London, England, UK
- Educació
- Oxford University (Brasenose College)
Christ's Hospital, West Sussex, England, UK - Professions
- writer
critic
editor (literary)
author - Relacions
- Mansfield, Katherine (wife)
Cowper, Richard (son) - Nota de desambiguació
- John Middleton Murry JUNIOR, the son of the better known editor and Keats scholar (etc), was also a writer usually under the pseudonyms Richard Cowper or Colin Murry. The books of JMM father and son should of course not be combined, and Middleton Murry Senior (the author of most of the JMM works here) should not be combined as an author with Richard Cowper, as has sometimes been done on LT.
Membres
Ressenyes
Potser també t'agrada
Autors associats
Estadístiques
- Obres
- 64
- També de
- 9
- Membres
- 243
- Popularitat
- #93,557
- Valoració
- 3.7
- Ressenyes
- 2
- ISBN
- 43
- Llengües
- 1
In the first lecture, appropriately enough, Murry grapples with the question of what we mean by style. Style, Murry asserts, is a term often used vaguely. He outlines three senses of the term. The most basic is the simple ability to marshal what you want to say in a way readers can follow. One with no sense of formulating a sentence or organizing a paragraph has no style, we say. Then there is style as idiosyncrasy (which Murry actually treats first). Show me one paragraph selected at random written by Karl Barth and I can identify the author. Readers more skilled than I will invariably not only do the same with Henry James, but tell you if it’s from his early, middle, or late period. Finally, there is what Murry calls Style Absolute; “a complete fusion of the personal and the universal.” This, Murry tells us, is the highest achievement of literature.
The absolute master of Style Absolute is (spoiler alert not necessary) Shakespeare. Also highly rated is Keats and, among authors active in Murry’s day, Hardy.
This doesn’t strike me as controversial, but apparently at the time this was an unabashedly elitist position, taken in opposition to those who decried style as unnecessary ornament and who advocated a flat style.
Not until the fourth lecture, however, does Murry deal with what he calls the central problem of style. This is the application of qualities of other art forms (rhythm from music and visual imagery from painting). These can also be qualities of written style, Murry concedes, but they are subordinate. The essential quality, however, is precision, also called crystallization. It seemed surprising at first that one means of achieving this, according to Murry, is metaphor. Rather than being an ornament, it is at times the most effective way to convey emotion (which he values—in the case of literature—above intellectual precision). And “in literature,” he assures us, “thought is always the handmaid of emotion.”
In the end, it seems, style is not technique. It comes from clear thought and honest feeling. As Murry writes: even “the smallest writer can do something to ensure that his individuality is not lost, by trying to make sure that he feels what he thinks he feels;—that he thinks what he thinks he thinks, that his words mean what he thinks they mean.”… (més)