BF. William Empson

31. Fry, Paul H. William Empson: Prophet Against Sacrifice. London: Routledge, 1991.

Includes a note about Empson’s distress at the growth of Japanese nationalism, which ‘no doubt led him to think afresh about the equilibrium and the complex reciprocity of power relations in his own country, and also about those mysteries of identification whereby individuals or classes can make themselves universals’; also, in reference to Some Versions of Pastoral (5), Fry contends that ‘Japanese nationalism embodied in the Emperor is an example of the pastoral pars pro toto which [Empson] may have found too obvious to mention’.