Robert Penn Warren was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of
New CriticismNew Criticism was a movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic...
. He was also a charter member of the
Fellowship of Southern WritersThe Fellowship of Southern Writers is a literary organization founded in 1987 in Chattanooga, Tennessee by 21 Southern writers and other literary luminaries...
. He founded the influential literary journal
The Southern Review with
Cleanth BrooksCleanth Brooks was an influential American literary critic and professor. He is best known for his contributions to New Criticism in the mid-twentieth century and for revolutionizing the teaching of poetry in American higher education...
in 1935. He received the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel for his novel
All the King's MenAll the King's Men is a novel by Robert Penn Warren first published in 1946. Its title is drawn from the nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty. In 1947 Warren won the Pulitzer Prize for All the King's Men....
(1946) and the
Pulitzer Prize for PoetryThe Pulitzer Prize in Poetry has been presented since 1922 for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author. However, special citations for poetry were presented in 1918 and 1919.-Winners:...
in 1958 and 1979. He is the only person to have won Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction and poetry.
Early years
Warren was born in
Guthrie, KentuckyGuthrie is a city in Todd County, Kentucky, United States. The population was 1,469 at the 2000 census. The city is named for James Guthrie, president of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad when the city was incorporated in 1867.-Geography:...
, which is very near the Tennessee-Kentucky border, to Robert Warren and Anna Penn. Warren's mother's family had roots in Virginia, having given their name to the community of Penn's Store in
Patrick County, VirginiaPatrick County is a county located in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of 2010, the population was 18,490. Its county seat is Stuart. It is located within both the rolling hills and valleys of the Piedmont Region of Virginia and mountainous Southwest Virginia....
. Robert Penn Warren graduated from Clarksville High School in Clarksville, Tennessee,
Vanderbilt UniversityVanderbilt University is a private research university located in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1873, the university is named for shipping and rail magnate "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided Vanderbilt its initial $1 million endowment despite having never been to the...
in 1925 and the
University of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
in 1926. Warren later attended
Yale UniversityYale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
and obtained his B. Litt. as a Rhodes Scholar from
New College, OxfordNew College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.- Overview :The College's official name, College of St Mary, is the same as that of the older Oriel College; hence, it has been referred to as the "New College of St Mary", and is now almost always...
, in
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
in 1930. He also received a
Guggenheim FellowshipGuggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
to study in
ItalyItaly , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
during the rule of
Benito MussoliniBenito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
. That same year he began his teaching career at Southwestern College (now
Rhodes CollegeRhodes College is a private, predominantly undergraduate, liberal arts college located in Memphis, Tennessee, USA. Originally founded by freemasons in 1848, Rhodes became affiliated with the Presbyterian Church in 1855. Rhodes enrolls approximately 1,700 students pursuing bachelor's and master's...
) in
Memphis, TennesseeMemphis is a city in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Tennessee, and the county seat of Shelby County. The city is located on the 4th Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers....
.
Career
While still an undergraduate at Vanderbilt, Warren became associated with the group of poets there known as the Fugitives, and somewhat later, during the early 1930s, Warren and some of the same writers formed a group known as the
Southern AgrariansThe Southern Agrarians were a group of twelve American writers, poets, essayists, and novelists, all with roots in the Southern United States, who joined together to write a pro-Southern agrarian manifesto, a...
. He contributed "The Briar Patch" to the
AgrarianAgrarianism has two common meanings. The first meaning refers to a social philosophy or political philosophy which values rural society as superior to urban society, the independent farmer as superior to the paid worker, and sees farming as a way of life that can shape the ideal social values...
manifesto
I'll Take My Stand along with 11 other Southern writers and poets (including fellow Vanderbilt poet/critics
John Crowe RansomJohn Crowe Ransom was an American poet, essayist, magazine editor, and professor.-Life:...
,
Allen TateJohn Orley Allen Tate was an American poet, essayist, social commentator, and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1943 to 1944.-Life:...
, and
Donald DavidsonDonald Grady Davidson was a U.S. poet, essayist, social and literary critic, and author...
). In "The Briar Patch" the young Warren defends racial segregation, in line with the traditionalist
conservativeConservatism in the United States has played an important role in American politics since the 1950s. Historian Gregory Schneider identifies several constants in American conservatism: respect for tradition, support of republicanism, preservation of "the rule of law and the Christian religion", and...
political leanings of the Agrarian group, although Davidson deemed Warren's stances in the essay so progressive that he argued for excluding it from the collection. However, Warren recanted these views in an article on the
Civil Rights MovementThe civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. In many situations it took the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change by nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations it was...
, "Divided South Searches Its Soul", which appeared in the July 9, 1956 issue of
LifeLife generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....
magazine. A month later, Warren published an expanded version of the article as a small book titled
Segregation: The Inner Conflict in the South. He subsequently adopted a high profile as a supporter of
racial integrationRacial integration, or simply integration includes desegregation . In addition to desegregation, integration includes goals such as leveling barriers to association, creating equal opportunity regardless of race, and the development of a culture that draws on diverse traditions, rather than merely...
. In 1965, he published
Who Speaks for the Negro?, a collection of interviews with black civil rights leaders including
Malcolm XMalcolm X , born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz , was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its...
and Martin Luther King, thus further distinguishing his political leanings from the more conservative philosophies associated with fellow Agrarians such as Tate,
Cleanth BrooksCleanth Brooks was an influential American literary critic and professor. He is best known for his contributions to New Criticism in the mid-twentieth century and for revolutionizing the teaching of poetry in American higher education...
, and particularly Davidson. Warren's interviews with civil rights leaders are at the
Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral HistoryThe Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky actively collects oral history interviews concentrating on 20th and 21st century Kentucky history, and maintains a collection of over 8,000 interviews made up of over 100 projects. The Center's emphasis has been on political,...
at the University of Kentucky.
Warren served as the Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress,
Poet LaureateA poet laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for state occasions and other government events...
, 1944–1945, and went on to win the
Pulitzer PrizeThe Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
in 1947, for his best known work, the novel
All the King's MenAll the King's Men is a novel by Robert Penn Warren first published in 1946. Its title is drawn from the nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty. In 1947 Warren won the Pulitzer Prize for All the King's Men....
, whose main character, Willie Stark, resembles the radical
populistPopulism can be defined as an ideology, political philosophy, or type of discourse. Generally, a common theme compares "the people" against "the elite", and urges social and political system changes. It can also be defined as a rhetorical style employed by members of various political or social...
governor of
LouisianaLouisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
, Huey Pierce Long (1893–1935), whom Warren was able to observe closely while teaching at
Louisiana State UniversityLouisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, most often referred to as Louisiana State University, or LSU, is a public coeducational university located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The University was founded in 1853 in what is now known as Pineville, Louisiana, under the name...
in Baton Rouge from 1933-42. Warren won Pulitzer Prizes in poetry in 1958 for
Promises: Poems 1954-1956, and in 1979 for
Now and Then. He is the only writer ever to win the Pulitzer in both fiction and poetry.
All the King's Men, starring
Broderick CrawfordBroderick Crawford was an Academy Award-winning American stage, film, radio and TV actor, often cast in tough-guy roles and best known for his starring role in the television series "Highway Patrol."-Early life:...
, became a highly successful film, winning the
Academy Award for Best PictureThe Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to artists working in the motion picture industry. The Best Picture category is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible not only...
in 1949. A 2006 film adaptation by writer/director
Steven ZaillianSteven Ernest Bernard Zaillian is an American screenwriter, film director, film editor, producer, and founder of Film Rites, a film production company. He won an Academy Award for his screenplay for Schindler's List and he has been nominated two times for Awakenings and Gangs of New York...
featured
Sean PennSean Justin Penn is an American actor, screenwriter and film director, also known for his political and social activism...
as Willie Stark and
Jude LawDavid Jude Heyworth Law , known professionally as Jude Law, is an English actor, film producer and director.He began acting with the National Youth Music Theatre in 1987, and had his first television role in 1989...
as Jack Burden. The opera
Willie Stark by
Carlisle FloydCarlisle Floyd is an American opera composer. The son of a Methodist minister, he based many of his works on themes from the South...
to his own libretto based on the novel was premiered in 1981.
In 1974, the
National Endowment for the HumanitiesThe National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent federal agency of the United States established by the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. The NEH is located at...
selected Warren for the
Jefferson LectureThe Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities is an honorary lecture series established in 1972 by the National Endowment for the Humanities . According to the NEH, the Lecture is "the highest honor the federal government confers for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities."-History of...
, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the
humanitiesThe humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....
. Warren's lecture was entitled "Poetry and Democracy" (subsequently published under the title
Democracy and Poetry). In 1980, Warren was presented with the
Presidential Medal of FreedomThe Presidential Medal of Freedom is an award bestowed by the President of the United States and is—along with thecomparable Congressional Gold Medal bestowed by an act of U.S. Congress—the highest civilian award in the United States...
by President
Jimmy CarterJames Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
. In 1981, Warren was selected as a MacArthur Fellow and later was named as the first U.S. Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry on February 26, 1986. In 1987, he was awarded the
National Medal of ArtsThe National Medal of Arts is an award and title created by the United States Congress in 1984, for the purpose of honoring artists and patrons of the arts. It is the highest honor conferred to an individual artist on behalf of the people. Honorees are selected by the National Endowment for the...
.
Warren was co-author, with
Cleanth BrooksCleanth Brooks was an influential American literary critic and professor. He is best known for his contributions to New Criticism in the mid-twentieth century and for revolutionizing the teaching of poetry in American higher education...
, of
Understanding Poetry, an influential literature textbook. It was followed by other similarly co-authored textbooks, including
Understanding Fiction, which was praised by Southern Gothic and Roman Catholic writer
Flannery O'ConnorMary Flannery O'Connor was an American novelist, short-story writer and essayist. An important voice in American literature, O'Connor wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries...
, and
Modern Rhetoric, which adopted what can be called a New Critical perspective.
Personal life
Warren was secretly married in the summer of 1929 to Emma Brescia until their divorce in 1951. His second marriage was in 1952 to
Eleanor ClarkEleanor Clark was an American writer. Clark was born in Los Angeles. She attended Vassar College in the 1930s and was involved with the literary magazine Con Spirito there, along with Elizabeth Bishop, Mary McCarthy, and her sister Eunice Clark...
, with whom he had two children,
Rosanna Phelps WarrenRosanna Phelps Warren is an American poet and scholar.-Biography:Warren is the daughter of novelist, literary critic and Poet Laureate Robert Penn Warren and writer Eleanor Clark. She graduated from Yale University in 1976, with a degree in painting, and then in 1980 received an MA from The...
(b. 1953) and Gabriel Penn Warren (b. 1955). He lived the latter part of his life in
Fairfield, ConnecticutFairfield is a town located in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. It is bordered by the towns of Bridgeport, Trumbull, Easton, Redding and Westport along the Gold Coast of Connecticut. As of the 2010 census, the town had a population of 59,404...
, and
Stratton, VermontStratton is a town in Windham County, Vermont, United States. The population was 136 at the 2000 census.Stratton was one of thirteen Vermont towns isolated by flooding caused by Hurricane Irene in 2011.-Geography:...
where he died of complications from bone cancer. He is buried at Stratton, Vermont, and, at his request, a memorial marker is situated in the Warren family gravesite in Guthrie, Kentucky.
Legacy
In April 2005, the
United States Postal ServiceThe United States Postal Service is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for providing postal service in the United States...
issued a commemorative stamp to mark the 100th anniversary of Warren's birth. Introduced at the post office in his native Guthrie, it depicts the author as he appeared in a 1948 photograph, with a background scene of a political rally designed to evoke the setting of
All the King's Men. His son and daughter, Gabriel and
Rosanna WarrenRosanna Phelps Warren is an American poet and scholar.-Biography:Warren is the daughter of novelist, literary critic and Poet Laureate Robert Penn Warren and writer Eleanor Clark. She graduated from Yale University in 1976, with a degree in painting, and then in 1980 received an MA from The...
, were in attendance.
Vanderbilt University houses the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, which is sponsored by the College of Arts and Science. It began its programs in January 1988, and in 1989 received a $480,000 Challenge Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The center promotes "interdisciplinary research and study in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences."
Works
- John Brown: The Making of a Martyr (1929)
- Thirty-six Poems (1936)
- An Approach to Literature (1938), with Cleanth Brooks
Cleanth Brooks was an influential American literary critic and professor. He is best known for his contributions to New Criticism in the mid-twentieth century and for revolutionizing the teaching of poetry in American higher education...
and John Thibaut Purser
- Understanding Poetry
Understanding Poetry was an influential American college textbook and poetry anthology by Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, first published in 1938. The book influenced New Criticism and went through its fourth edition in 1976....
(1939), with Cleanth Brooks
- Night Rider
Night Rider is the first novel by American author Robert Penn Warren. It was published in the United States in 1939.The book's main character, Percy Munn, is a young lawyer involved in a fictionalized version of the Black Patch Tobacco Wars, which took place in Kentucky and Tennessee in the early...
(1939). Novel
- Eleven Poems on the Same Theme (1942)
- At Heaven's Gate
At Heaven's Gate is the second novel by Robert Penn Warren. First published in 1943, it was reprinted in New York by New Directions Publishing Corporation in 1985 with ISBN 0-8112-0933-4-Plot summary:...
(1943). Novel
- Understanding Fiction (1943), with Cleanth Brooks
- Selected Poems, 1923 – 1943 (1944)
- All the King's Men
All the King's Men is a novel by Robert Penn Warren first published in 1946. Its title is drawn from the nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty. In 1947 Warren won the Pulitzer Prize for All the King's Men....
(1946). Novel
- Blackberry Winter: A Story Illustrated by Wightman Williams (1946)
- The Circus in the Attic, and Other Stories (1947)
- Fundamentals of Good Writing: A Handbook of Modern Rhetoric (1950), with Cleanth Brooks
- World Enough and Time (1950). Novel
- Brother to Dragons: A Tale in Verse and Voices (1953)
- Band of Angels (1955). Novel
- Segregation: The Inner Conflict in the South (1956)
- Promises: Poems: 1954 – 1956 (1957)
- Selected Essays (1958)
- The Cave (1959). Novel
- Remember the Alamo! (1958). For children
- The Gods of Mount Olympus (1959). For children
- How Texas Won Her Freedom (1959). For children
- All the King's Men: A Play (1960)
- You, Emperors, and Others: Poems 1957 – 1960 (1960)
- The Legacy of the Civil War (1961)
- Wilderness: A Tale of the Civil War (1961). Novel
|
Flood: A Romance of Our Time (1964). Novel
Who Speaks for the Negro? (1965)
Selected Poems: New and Old 1923 – 1966 (1966)
Incarnations: Poems 1966 – 1968 (1968)
Audubon: A Vision (1969). Book-length poem
Homage to Theodor Dreiser (1971)
John Greenleaf Whittier's Poetry: An Appraisal and a Selection (1971)
Meet Me in the Green Glen (1971). Novel
American Literature: The Makers and the Making (1974), with Cleanth Brooks and R.W.B. Lewis
Or Else: Poem/Poems 1968 – 1974 (1974)
Democracy and Poetry (1975)
Selected Poems: 1923 – 1976 (1977)
A Place to Come to (1977). Novel
Now and Then: Poems 1976 – 1978 (1978)
Brother to Dragons: A Tale in Verse and Vorces - A New Version (1979)
Being Here: Poetry 1977 – 1980 (1980)
Jefferson Davis Gets His Citizenship Back (1980)
Rumor Verified: Poems 1979 – 1980 (1981)
Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce (1983). Book-length poem
New and Selected Poems: 1923 – 1985 (1985)
Portrait of a Father (1988)
New and Selected Essays (1989)
The Collected Poems (1998), edited by John Burt
All the King's Men: Three Stage Versions (2000), edited by James A. Grimshaw, Jr. and James A. Perkins
All the King's Men: Restored Edition (2002), edited by Noel Polk
The Poets Laureate Anthology (W. W. Norton & Company, 2010) |
Further reading
- Millichap, Joseph R.. Robert Penn Warren after Audubon:The Work of Aging and the Quest for Transcendence in His Later Poetry. Baton Rouge, LA. :Louisiana State University Press
The Louisiana State University Press is a nonprofit book publisher and an academic unit of Louisiana State University. Founded in 1935, the press publishes scholarly, general interest, and regional books as part of the university’s mission to disseminate knowledge and culture...
, 2009 ISBN 978-0-8071-3456-6
External links