Volume 53, Number 5 · March 23, 2006
The Genius of Ambiguity
By John Gross
William Empson, Volume 1: Among the Mandarins
by John Haffenden
Oxford University Press, 695 pp., $45.00
William Empson was a prodigy. He arrived at Magdalene College, Cambridge, in 1925, with a scholarship in mathematics: his college supervisor regarded him as one of the best mathematicians he had ever had. In 1928, however, he switched to English, under the supervision of I.A. Richards, and within a year or two a paper that he wrote for Richards while he was still an undergraduate had evolved into one of the great works of modern criticism—Seven Types of Ambiguity.
Review, 5181 words
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