“A Critical Sense Worthy of Respect”: John Marston and the Early Poetics of Robert Penn Warren

• Published in: Style (University Park, PA) Vol. 36; no. 2; pp. 203 - 221
• Main Author: Van Dyke, John C.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: DeKalb Pennsylvania State University Press 22.06.2002; Penn State University Press
• Subjects: American literature; Criticism and interpretation; Fiction; Fugitive poets; Historical text analysis; Influence; Literary criticism; Literary style; Literary theory; Marston, John (1575?-1634); Narrative poetry; Personal profiles; Poetic meter; Poetic themes; Poetics; Poetry; Poets; Rhyme; Satire; Satirists; Warren, Robert Penn (1905-1989); United States; United Kingdom
• ISSN: 0039-4238; 2374-6629

Robert Penn Warren's B.Litt. thesis, completed in 1930 while Warren was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, provides the earliest statement of the young writer's developing poetics. In the thesis, Warren concludes his literary-textual-historical analysis with an assessment of Marston's importance and focuses on “the two theoretical matters of criticism […] touched on in the course of the satires: the place of ‘fiction’ in poetry and the relation of style to content.” Warren's comments on these two matters bring to light the young poet's own sense of the contemporary critical climate and reveal his own developing poetics. Warren is not so much interested in the interpretation of Marston as he is in Marston's contribution to the struggle to understand how texts--specifically poetic texts—mean and achieve a certain effect. While Warren's comments are set within the specific context of the development of Anglo-American literary modernism, more recent work in literary theory validates the persisting questions raised by Warren. Comparison of Warren's analysis both to developments in Marston criticism and to Warren's own development as a critic and poet shows that Warren's earliest critical work grappled with critical issues that were not only central to literary modernism but have also persisted in the discourse of recent literary theory.