John Crowe Ransom

Have you ever had to do a close reading assessment or activity in school? Well, you can thank the American poet, John Crowe Ransom (1888-1974), for that. Ransom developed The New Critical theory for analyzing literature, which led to the development of close reading techniques. The Southern poet believed in reading small sections of text with a methodical, precise, scientific, and unbiased approach to derive a more objective meaning. Surely poetry is not an exact science, but let's take a look at Ransom's life, ideas, and poetry to examine his writing critically.

John Crowe Ransom: Biography

John Crowe Ransom's life was greatly influenced by his Southern upbringing and the group of Southern writers he associated with.

John Crowe Ransom: Early Life and Education

John Crowe Ransom was born in Pulaski, Tennessee, on April 30, 1888, to John James Ransom and Sara Elle Ransom. His father was a Methodist minister, and he grew up with his two sisters and brother in various towns around Tennessee—including Spring Hill, Franklin, Springfield, and Nashville. Ransom was homeschooled until he was 10 years old and later attended a public school called the Bowen School.

John Crowe Ransom attended Vanderbilt University in Nashville when he was only 15 years old. He took classes in philosophy and took a two-year break from higher education to teach at Taylorsville High School in Mississippi and Haynes-McLean School in Tennessee. Ransom taught Latin and Greek. The teaching career he started in his youth carried on throughout his lifetime. Ransom graduated as valedictorian from Vanderbilt University in 1909.

After graduating and teaching an additional year in Tennessee, Ransom was nominated as a Rhodes Scholar. From 1910 to 1913, he attended the University of Oxford and studied classics.

Fig. 1 - Ransom's study of philosophy and classics greatly influenced his poetry.

John Crowe Ransom: Teaching and Writing Career

After studying at Oxford, John Crowe Ransom taught Latin for a year at a preparatory school in Connecticut called the Hotchkiss School. In 1914, he was hired at the English department at Vanderbilt University. However, during World War I (1914-1918), Ransom left to serve as an artillery officer in France. After the war in 1918, he resumed his teaching career at Vanderbilt.

After the end of World War I, Ransom and some other literature teachers and students at Vanderbilt University began meeting on Saturday nights for poetry workshops. The group became a well-known literary group called the Fugitives.

While meeting with the Fugitives, John Crowe Ransom began writing poetry. In 1919, Ransom published his first book of poems called Poems about God. "Poems About God" was inspired by the teachings of Sidney Ittron-Hirst, a mystic poet and philosopher. The poetry book explored Ransom’s interest in philosophy and was praised by the American poet Robert Frost and the British poet Robert Graves.

Under Ransom’s leadership, the Fugitives started a highly influential literary magazine for American Modernist poets called The Fugitive. The poetry magazine was in publication from 1922 to 1925.

Fig. 2 - Ransom's exploration of religion and spirituality greatly influenced his poetry. He wrote a manifesto called "God Without Thunder: An Unorthodox Defense of Orthodoxy" (1930) to promote fundamentalist Christianity.

In 1920, Ransom married his wife, Robb Reavill, with whom he had three children. Ransom is best known for his poetry produced in the 1920s. His most famous poetry collections are Chills and Fever (1924) and Two Gentlemen in Bonds (1927). Ransom’s reputation and remembrance as a poet is based upon a select number of poems he wrote between 1916 to 1927, including “Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter“ (1924), “Blue Girls” (1927), “Dead Boy” (1927), and “Janet Waking” (1927).

In the 1930s, John Crowe Ransom was part of the Agrarian movement, which criticized industrialism as damaging Southern culture and the economy. Agrarians were in favor of a pre-Civil War agricultural economical model. John Crowe Ransom was one of 12 Southern Agrarians to publish an Agrarian Manifesto called I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition. Ransom moved away from the Agrarian movement in the later 1930s and stood actively against it later in his life.

Also in 1937, Ransom became a professor at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. He was the founder and editor of the school's literary journal, the Kenyon Review, from 1939 till his retirement in 1959. Ransom taught numerous successful American Poets, including Donald Davidson, Robert Lowell, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, and Randall Jarrell.

John Crowe Ransom won numerous poetry awards, including the 1951 Bollinger Prize for Poetry, the 1951 Russell Loines Award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the 1964 National Book Award for his collection, Selected Poems (1945).

John Crowe Ransom: Death and Obituary

John Crowe Ransom died at the age of 86, on July 3, 1974. He died in Gambier, Ohio, in the same town where he taught poetry for 20 years. The poet was buried at the Kenyon College Cemetery in Gambier.

Random’s obituary was published in The New York Times on July 4th, remembering him as a strong, Southern American writer with a unique voice who helped found the Fugitives and the New Criticism literary movement.

John Crowe Ransom: Theory

John Crowe Ransom is known as the founder of a literary criticism theory called The New Critical theory.

In 1937, Ransom published the essay “Criticism, Inc.,” which helped establish his theory of emphasizing a more objective, precise, and systematic method of writing literary criticism. In 1941, Ransom published a collection of essays called The New Criticism, which gave the movement its formal name. The New Critical Theory was further developed by Ransom’s students and followers, such as Allen Tate, Cleanth Brooks, and Robert Penn Warren.

John Crowe Ransom: Poems

Let’s look at John Crowe Ransom’s poems, “Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter” and “Dead Boy,” to better understand the Southern poet’s writing style. Both these poems explore the shock of young death. Death, aging, the transience of life, and love are common themes in Ransom's poetry.

“Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter” by John Crowe Ransom

“Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter” (1924) is an elegy from Ransom’s poetry collection, Chills and Fever.

"Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter" is Ransom's most famous poem. The poem explores how death informs the meaning of life. In the poem, a young girl, whom the neighbors used to see playing outside their windows, is now dead and gone. Her loss is understood through the contrast of the exuberance and love of nature she displayed with her lifeless body lying "so primly propped":

Fig. 3 - Much of Ransom's imagery draws upon the rural landscape of the American South.

“Dead Boy” by John Crowe Ransom

”Dead Boy” (1927) is a poem from Ransom’s poetry collection, Two Gentlemen in Bonds. The poem tells the story of a boy from a small Southern town who was not well-liked but died young. The poet explores the idea that death is such a deep, profound loss despite the shrugs and the comments of the townspeople who cannot muster affection for the boy. Through the poem "Dead Boy," Ransom suggests that even though someone may not be associated with pleasant memories, the loss of life is gravely felt, which points to the preciousness of life:

John Crowe Ransom: Quotes

John Crowe Ransom had a way of presenting his academic and philosophical knowledge in a humorous, linguistically satisfying way in his poetry. In the poem "Survey of Literature" (1945), the poet writes ironically of the sappy sweetness of prior Romantic poets and points to the difficulty of writing and living without established tradition:

John Crowe Ransom's poetry portrays the sad realities of life in an ironic way. In his poem "Piazza Piece" (1945), he plays on the romantic sonnet form to tell a story of an ideal romance gone awry as a hopeful, beautiful lady is prayed upon by an old man in a raincoat. Ransom's poetry often focuses on the themes of love, beauty, gender roles, and societal expectations. He explores different viewpoints and voices in his poetry: