Christopher Ricks
Now (2006) Warren Professor the Humanities at Boston University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Professor of Poetry at Oxford University, and one time Professor of English Literature at the University of Bristol, UK where Fox studied under him to great advantage (not that he has ever suggested Ricks should, or could, somehow be allocated a portion of blame for Fox's subsequent sorties in the bloody field of poetry). During a distinguished professional career as a teacher Ricks has created a vast and enormously valuable resource of scholarly work for the help of present generations of people interested in poetry. All his work is informed by a supremely keen wit and deeply insightful eye. His self-ironic comment on his own work tells us a lot, not only about him, but also about Eliot and what Eliot needed from literary criticism; indeed, the comment tells us a good deal about poetry in general:
A letter from the fertile month, July 1914, remains comically pertinent to the enterprise of editing; after a bawdy King Bolo stanza of his own invention, Eliot keeps up the good work:
The bracketed portions we owe to the restorations of the editor, Prof. Dr. Hasenpfeffer (Halle), with the assistance of his two inseparable friends, Dr. Hans Frigger (the celebrated poet) and Herr Schnitzel (aus Wien). How much we owe to the hard won intuition of this truly great scholar! The editor also justly observes: "There seems to be a double entendre about the last two lines, but the fine flavour of the jest has not survived the centuries". - Yet we hope that such genius as his may penetrate even this enigma.
(Letters i 42)Dr Hasenpfeffer: Dr Jugged Hare. An editor, or jugger, of Inventions of the March Hare must expect some such mockery, but may take some comfort from Eliot's later words about learned doctors:
Our only complaint against both editors [Dr Wood and Dr Harrison] is that they have conscientiously limited themselves, in their notes, to what is verifiable, and have deprived themselves and their readers of that delight in aside and conjecture which the born annotator exploits.
[Christopher Ricks editor, "T. S. Eliot Inventions of the March Hare Poems 1909-1917", p xxix faber and faber 1996.]
[Hasenpfeffer = Hare in Pepper]
We might observe that any fine poet would be grateful to have an infusion of Ricks, hallmarked as it would be by just and beautiful observation, married to a supremely acute and sensitive imagination. When Ricks was a tutor at Worcester College, University of Oxford, an Empsonian infusion fueled a truly awesome, yet typically Ricksian, observation on Milton's use of similes (similies) and allusions (infusions):
Unfortunately there is - as Mr Whaler saw - one factor which disconcertingly complicates any discussion of the relevance of the similes. Namely, that Milton does sometimes use similes and allusions with a clear sense of the fact that they don't fit exactly, that he does sometimes use an unlikeness between the things compared. It is just this that De Quincey acutely fastened on. The trouble here is obvious: that we now have to hand a gambit like 'heads I win, tails you lose'. If a simile does turn out to be relevant, then that is good; and if it turns out not to be, then that is good too, since it is 'ironic disparity'. This is admittedly troublesome, but Milton is a subtly complicated poet; and there seems no doubt that his mind did sometimes work in this way.
[Christopher Ricks, "Milton's Grand Style", p 127 Oxford Paperbacks 1972, first issued OUP 1963.]
Ricks goes on to illustrate this with the subtle, somewhat devilish, complication of the Jacob's Ladder vision (Paradise Lost iii 510-25).
So there we are, certainly a clear demonstration of how imaginative and cogently expressed scholarship can be really useful (ie a help, rather than a hindrance). It happily almost admits that a poet can get away with anything if admired, in other words when it is the critic who is subject to the poet. Fox, it should be understood, only cares about what is a help to him.
Ricks' latest work "Dylan's Visions of Sin" on the pop singer Bob Dylan has exposed him (Ricks) to some negative reactions in the UK, And it is difficult to see why he sees so much in Dylan's work. Nevertheless, Ricks, apart from combining an extraordinarily intelligence with a professional knowledge of literature perhaps unsurpassed in the 20th century, is also one of the very few literary critics who can be trusted. Fox sees Ricks as one of that rare breed an absolutely honest critic with something useful to tell you about what he has read, heard or looked at. Thus, if at first surprised by Rick's care over Dylan, rather than take it as a chance to stick the knife in (at long last, a chance for the slighted), Fox sees it that that it would be wise to look more carefully himself at Dylan.
For biostuff on Sir Christopher see wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Ricks which includes lowdown on the "principles v. theory" controversy.