Christopher Ricks Quotes

The fabliau, then, is a short story that is a tall story. It combines a burly blurting of dirty words with a reveling in humiliations that are good unclean fun. A popular venture that is keen to paste—épater—everybody (not just the bourgeoisie), it is the art of the single entendre. Highly staged low life, it guffaws at the pious, the prudish, and the priggish. High cockalorum versus high decorum…. The introduction here, like the translator’s note, tells well the story of the comic tales, anonymous for the most part, usually two or three hundred lines long, of which about 160 exist.

A great work of art is one that continues to repay attention.

For it is characteristic of true simplicity that there may radiate from its utmost directness a good many glinting things.

Geniuses are people who notice things and connections between things which others haven't noticed. Genius must be a surprise.

Geniuses are at work in the rock music field, and great popularity is no proof you aren't good.

When a language creates - as it does - a community within the present, it does so only by courtesy of a community between the present and the past.