Ransom, John Crowe

born April 30, 1888, Pulaski, Tenn., U.S.

died July 4, 1974, Gambier, Ohio

U.S. poet and critic.

Ransom attended and later taught at Vanderbilt University, where he became the leader of the Fugitives, a group of poets who shared a belief in the South and its agrarian traditions and published the influential journal The Fugitive (1922–25); he was among those Fugitives called Agrarian who contributed to I'll Take My Stand (1930). At Kenyon College, he founded and edited (1939–59) the Kenyon Review. His literary studies include The New Criticism (1941), which gave its name to an important critical movement (see New Criticism), and he became recognized as a leading theorist of the post-World War I Southern literary renaissance. His Selected Poems (1945; rev. ed., 1969) won the National Book Award.

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▪ American poet and critic

born April 30, 1888, Pulaski, Tenn., U.S.

died July 4, 1974, Gambier, Ohio

 American poet and critic, leading theorist of the Southern literary renaissance that began after World War I. Ransom's The New Criticism (1941) provided the name of the influential mid-20th-century school of criticism (see New Criticism).

      Ransom, whose father was a minister, lived during his childhood in several towns in the Nashville, Tenn., area. He attended Vanderbilt University in Nashville for two years, then dropped out to teach because he felt his father should not continue to support him. He later returned to the university and graduated in 1909 at the head of his class. Subsequently he went to Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar. From 1914 to 1937 he taught English at Vanderbilt, where he was the leader of the Fugitives, a group of poets that published the influential literary magazine The Fugitive (1922–25) and shared a belief in the South and its regional traditions.

      Ransom was also among those Fugitives who became known as the Agrarians. Their I'll Take My Stand (1930) criticized the idea that industrialization was the answer to the needs of the South.

      Ransom taught from 1937 until his retirement in 1958 at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, where he founded and edited (1939–59) the literary magazine The Kenyon Review. Ransom's literary studies include God Without Thunder (1930); The World's Body (1938), in which he takes the position that poetry and science furnish different but equally valid knowledge about the world; Poems and Essays (1955); and Beating the Bushes: Selected Essays, 1941–1970 (1972). Ransom's poetry, which one critic has applauded as exhibiting weighty facts “in small or delicate settings,” often deals with the subjects of self-alienation and death. His poetry is collected in Chills and Fever (1924) and Two Gentlemen in Bonds (1927). Thereafter he published only five new poems; his Selected Poems (1945; rev. ed., 1969), which won a National Book Award, contains revisions of his earlier work. T.D. Young edited his critical essays (1968). Selected Essays of John Crowe Ransom appeared in 1984.

Additional Reading

Thomas Daniel Young, Gentleman in a Dustcoat (1976), is a life of Ransom. Among critical works are John L. Stewart, John Crowe Ransom (1962); Karl F. Knight, The Poetry of John Crowe Ransom: A Study of Diction, Metaphor, and Symbol (1964); Thornton H. Parsons, John Crowe Ransom (1969); and Kieran Quinlan, John Crowe Ransom's Secular Faith (1989).

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