Christopher Ricks

Sir

Christopher Bruce Ricks

FBA
Born (1933-09-18) 18 September 1933 (age 91)
Beckenham, United Kingdom
OccupationCritic, scholar, professor
NationalityBritish
Alma materBalliol College, Oxford
GenreLiterary criticism
Notable awards2003 Mellon Distinguished Achievement Award

Sir Christopher Bruce Ricks FBA (born 18 September 1933)[1] is a British literary critic and scholar. He is the William M. and Sara B. Warren Professor of the Humanities at Boston University (US), co-director of the Editorial Institute at Boston University, and was Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford (UK) from 2004 to 2009. In 2008, he served as president of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics. He is known as a champion of Victorian poetry; an enthusiast of Bob Dylan, whose lyrics he has analysed at book length;[2] a trenchant reviewer[3] of writers he considers pretentious (Marshall McLuhan, Christopher Norris, Geoffrey Hartman, Stanley Fish); and a warm reviewer of those he thinks humane or humorous (F. R. Leavis, W. K. Wimsatt, Christina Stead). Hugh Kenner praised his "intent eloquence",[4] and Geoffrey Hill his "unrivalled critical intelligence".[5] W. H. Auden described Ricks as "exactly the kind of critic every poet dreams of finding".[6] John Carey calls him the "greatest living critic".[7]

  1. ^ Wroe, Nicholas (29 January 2005). "Bringing it all back home". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 8 September 2023.
  2. ^ Michael Gray (2006), The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, p. 571.
  3. ^ A collection is in Reviewery.
  4. ^ Hugh Kenner, A Sinking Island: The Modern English Writers, Knopf, New York 1988, p. 245
  5. ^ Geoffrey Hill, Collected Critical Writings, OUP, Oxford 2008, p. 379
  6. ^ Oxford Book of English Verse, ed. Ricks, OUP 1999
  7. ^ "John Carey in conversation with Clive James". clivejames.com. Archived from the original on 19 January 2012. Retrieved 8 September 2023.