Cleanth Brooks

Cleanth Brooks
Born	October 16, 1906 Murray, Kentucky, U.S.
Died	May 10, 1994
Education	Vanderbilt University (BA) Tulane University (MA) Exeter College, Oxford (BA, BLitt)
Occupation(s)	Literary critic, academic
Spouse	Edith Amy Blanchord

Cleanth Brooks (/ˈkliːænθ/ KLEE-anth;^[1] October 16, 1906 – May 10, 1994) was an American literary critic and professor. He is best known for his contributions to New Criticism in the mid-20th century and for revolutionizing the teaching of poetry in American higher education. His best-known works, The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry (1947) and Modern Poetry and the Tradition (1939), argue for the centrality of ambiguity and paradox as a way of understanding poetry. With his writing, Brooks helped to formulate formalist criticism, emphasizing "the interior life of a poem" (Leitch 2001) and codifying the principles of close reading.

Brooks was also the preeminent critic of Southern literature, writing classic texts on William Faulkner, and co-founder of the influential journal The Southern Review (Leitch 2001) with Robert Penn Warren.