John Middleton Murry (1889–1957)
Autore di The problem of style
Sull'Autore
Nota di disambiguazione:
(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.
Opere di John Middleton Murry
Jesus, man of genius 4 copie
The Evolution of an Intellectual 2 copie
Cinnamon and Angelica : a play 2 copie
Community Farm 2 copie
Poems, 1917-1918 2 copie
The challenge of Schweitzer 1 copia
Discoveries 1 copia
The conquest of death 1 copia
The Defence of Democracy 1 copia
Things to Come 1 copia
John Clare and Other Studies 1 copia
The Brotherhood of Peace 1 copia
The Adelphi, August, 1924 1 copia
The Adelphi, January, 1927 1 copia
Europe in travail 1 copia
The Adelphi 1 copia
Democracy and war 1 copia
The necessity of pacifism 1 copia
The things we are : a novel 1 copia
Poems 1916 - 20 1 copia
Opere correlate
Then and Now. A Selection of Articles, Stories & Poems, Taken from the First Fifty Numbers of ‘Now & Then’,… (1935) — Collaboratore — 2 copie
Etichette
Informazioni generali
- Data di nascita
- 1889-08-06
- Data di morte
- 1957-03-13
- Luogo di sepoltura
- Thelnetham Church, Suffolk, England, UK
- Sesso
- male
- Nazionalità
- England
UK - Luogo di nascita
- Peckham, London, England, UK
- Luogo di morte
- Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, England, UK
- Luogo di residenza
- London, England, UK
- Istruzione
- Oxford University (Brasenose College)
Christ's Hospital, West Sussex, England, UK - Attività lavorative
- writer
critic
editor (literary)
author - Relazioni
- Mansfield, Katherine (wife)
Cowper, Richard (son) - Nota di disambiguazione
- 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.
Utenti
Recensioni
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Statistiche
- Opere
- 64
- Opere correlate
- 9
- Utenti
- 243
- Popolarità
- #93,557
- Voto
- 3.7
- Recensioni
- 2
- ISBN
- 43
- Lingue
- 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.”… (altro)