ABSTRACT

Some critics win people by their fierce single-mindedness, like Yvor Winters when he does not deject us. Francis Fergusson is an ecumenical critic who cannot help seeing all round. Most have a purview, but his view is comprehensive. Writing that has an ax to grind, for example satire, succeeds as it distinguishes. In Pope's model satires, people are never in danger of confusing good and bad, nor do these opposites interpenetrate, making judgment uneasy. A higher kind of art accommodates without judging, though. Fergusson is among the accommodators. Taking issue with modern criticism's Great Cham, Fergusson nails the inadequacy of a criticism that fails to relate art and life. The Janus-like critic resembles his version of William Shakespeare, whose "sense of analogy is perhaps too productive, burgeoning too richly in all directions". Fergusson's direction, like Shakespeare's, is centrifugal.