In Defense of Reason

In Defense of Reason

Author	Yvor Winters
Language	English
Subject	American literature American poetry
Genre	Literary criticism
Publisher	Alan Swallow Press Ohio University Press
Publication date	1947
Publication place	United States
Pages	611

In Defense of Reason is a three-volume work of literary criticisms by the American poet and literary critic Yvor Winters. First published in 1947, the book is known for its meticulous study of metrical verse and for its examples of Winters' system of ethical criticism.

The collection consists of three books of critical essays that Winters had written earlier. The first, Primitivism and Decadence: A Study of American Experimental Poetry, is Winters' revised doctoral dissertation on the classification and analysis of poetic structures. The second, Maule's Curse: Seven Studies in the History of American Obscurantism, is a study of seven prominent American novelists and poets of the 19th century. The third, The Anatomy of Nonsense, is a study of several prominent writers associated with modernism. The book also contains three general essays that are crucial to understanding Winters as a critic and poet: the Foreword to the whole collection, "Preliminary Problems," which is in effect the introduction to The Anatomy of Nonsense, and "The Significance of 'The Bridge,' by Hart Crane, or 'What Are We to Do with Professor X?'".

Though he started his poetic career in the early 1920s as a free-verse imagist, by late in that decade Winters had become a modern classicist, of a sort.^[1] He argued that poets should use metrical verse more often in their compositions. He also argued that poems should have rational structures and favor discursive language rather than the loose, associationist structures and styles favored by the moderns, which emphasize the emotions and personal expression.^[2] As is explained in these essays, Winters considered the moderns the literary descendants of Romanticism.^[3]