ABSTRACT
London, 1930, (a) pp. 186–9, (b) pp. 284–6
William Empson (1906–84), poet and critic, taught during the thirties in China and Japan. He was an early admirer of Auden. Seven Types was his first book.
The extracts need some introduction. An ambiguity is ‘Any consequence of language, however slight, which adds some nuance to the direct statement of prose’ (Seven Types, p. 1).
‘An ambiguity of the fourth type occurs when two or more meanings of a statement do not agree among themselves, but combine to make clear a complicated state of mind in the author’ (p. 168).
‘An example of the seventh type of ambiguity… occurs when the two meanings of the word, the two values of the ambiguity, are the two opposite meanings defined by the 167context, so that the total effect is to show a fundamental division in the writer’s mind’ (p. 244).
