Obituary

J. D. McClatchy, an American poet known for work whose cool formal sheen belied the roiling emotion below its surface, died on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 72. His death, from cancer — an illness that had been grist for poems in recent years — was announced by Random House. The author of eight volumes of poetry, Mr. McClatchy was considered one of the country’s foremost men of letters. He was also a prolific editor, anthologist, translator and critic, as well as the author of a string of acclaimed opera librettos, among them “Our Town,” for Ned Rorem’s setting of Thornton Wilder’s enduring drama of village life, and the Metropolitan Opera’s condensed English-language production of Mozart’s “Magic Flute,” designed by Julie Taymor . Mr. McClatchy’s poems and essays appeared frequently in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Paris Review and elsewhere. From his first book of poetry, “Scenes From Another Life” (1981), to his last, “Plundered … [Read more...] about J.D. McClatchy, Poet of the Body, in Sickness and Health, Dies at 72

Geoffrey H. Hartman, a literary critic whose work took in the Romantic poets, Judaic sacred texts, Holocaust studies, deconstruction and the workings of memory — and took on the very function of criticism itself — died on March 14 at his home in Hamden, Conn. He was 86. His death was announced by Yale University, where he was the Sterling professor emeritus of English and comparative literature. Considered one of the world’s foremost scholars of literature, Professor Hartman was associated with the “Yale School,” a cohort of literary theorists that included Harold Bloom, J. Hillis Miller and Paul de Man. Their work was rooted in deconstruction, the approach to analyzing the multilayered relationship between a text and its meaning that was advanced by the 20th-century French philosopher Jacques Derrida . Professor Hartman was renowned for his vast Continental erudition. His scholarly attention ranged over Wordsworth, to whom he was long devoted; the poetry of Gerard Manley … [Read more...] about Geoffrey H. Hartman, Scholar Who Saw Literary Criticism as Art, Dies at 86

M. H. Abrams, who transformed the study of Romanticism with the critical histories “The Mirror and the Lamp” and “Natural Supernaturalism,” and who edited the first seven editions of “The Norton Anthology of English Literature,” a virtual Bible in literature survey courses, died on Tuesday in Ithaca, N.Y. He was 102. Cornell University, where he taught for nearly 40 years, announced his death on Wednesday. On its publication in 1953, “The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition” was greeted as an instant classic. With fluid ease, Professor Abrams distilled the arguments of philosophers and critics from ancient Greece onward as he delineated a radical shift in aesthetics in the early 19th century, set in motion by poets like Wordsworth and Coleridge. The change was expressed by several ruling images, or “constitutive metaphors,” as Professor Abrams called them, chiefly the mirror and the lamp. For neoclassical writers like Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson, … [Read more...] about M.H. Abrams, 102, Dies; Shaped Romantic Criticism and Literary ‘Bible’

John Hollander , a virtuosic poet who breathed new life into traditional verse forms and whose later work achieved a visionary, mythic sweep, died on Saturday in Branford, Conn. He was 83. The cause was pulmonary congestion, his daughter Elizabeth Hollander said. As a young poet, Mr. Hollander fell under the influence of W. H. Auden, whose experiments in fusing contemporary subject matter with traditional metric forms he emulated. It was Auden who selected Mr. Hollander’s first collection of poems, “A Crackling of Thorns,” for the Yale Series of Younger Poets, which published it in 1958 with an introduction by Auden. Mr. Hollander’s wit, inventiveness and intellectual range drew comparisons to Ben Jonson and 17th-century Metaphysical poets like John Donne. The poet Richard Howard, in the book “Alone With America: Essays on the Art of Poetry in the United States Since 1950,” praised “a technical prowess probably without equal in American verse today.” Early on, Mr. Hollander … [Read more...] about John Hollander, Poet at Ease With Intellectualism and Wit, Dies at 83

Wayne C. Booth, one of the pre-eminent literary critics of the second half of the 20th century, whose lifelong study of the art of rhetoric illuminated the means by which authors seduce, cajole and more than occasionally lie to their readers in the service of narrative, died yesterday morning at his home in Chicago. He was 84. The cause was complications of dementia, his daughter Katherine Booth Stevens said. A longtime faculty member of the University of Chicago, he was at his death the George M. Pullman Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of English there. His books, which are part of the core curriculum at universities around the world, include "The Rhetoric of Fiction" (University of Chicago, 1961); "A Rhetoric of Irony" (University of Chicago, 1974); and "The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction" (University of California, 1988). His latest book, a memoir titled "My Many Selves," is scheduled to be published next year by Utah State University Press. To many earlier … [Read more...] about Wayne C. Booth, Critic Who Analyzed Rhetoric, Dies at 84

Frank Kermode, who rose from humble origins to become one of England’s most respected and influential critics, died Tuesday at his home in Cambridge, England. He was 90. His death was announced by The London Review of Books, which he helped create and to which he frequently contributed. The author David Lodge called Mr. Kermode “the finest English critic of his generation,” and few disagreed with that assessment. The author or editor of more than 50 books published over five decades, Mr. Kermode was probably best known for his studies of Shakespeare. But his range was wide, reaching from Beowulf to Philip Roth, from Homer to Ian McEwan, from the Bible to Don DeLillo. Along the way he devoted individual volumes to John Donne, Wallace Stevens and D. H. Lawrence. Unrelentingly productive, he published “Concerning E. M. Forster” just last December. His collections of literary criticism and lectures — among them “The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction” … [Read more...] about Frank Kermode, a Critic Who Wrote With Style, Is Dead at 90