Empson Here and Now?

In light of Oxford University Press issuing two volumes in The Critical Works of William Empson (Some Versions of Pastoral [1935] and The Structure of Complex Words [1951]), this essay thinks over Empson's career and major works to consider what his value may be nearly a century after his first book, with special attention to problems that Empson's Englishness may pose to readers in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]