ransom, price of redemption demanded by the captor of a person, vessel, or city. In ancient times cities frequently paid ransom to prevent their plundering by captors. The custom of ransoming was formerly sanctioned by law. Soldiers, given the right to kill or enslave their prisoners, frequently preferred to free them after receiving payment. This mitigated bloodshed, for it was more profitable to hold enemies for ransom than to massacre them. One of the rights of a feudal lord was to call upon his tenants to ransom him if he were captured in battle. The amount of ransom varied with the rank of the captive; a king or a noted warrior brought a great sum. For the payment of the ransom of Richard I (Richard Cɶur de Lion) a special tax was levied in England; the French sovereign paid heavy ransoms for Bertrand Du Guesclin; and Scotland was impoverished in paying for James I. Merchant vessels captured in privateering were sometimes ransomed by their owners. After receiving the ransom, the privateer sometimes furnished a ransom bill, which allowed safe conduct for the ship to one of her native ports. Today the term generally refers to the sum paid to a kidnapper for the release of an individual or to an airplane hijacker for the release of passengers, crew, and plane.

Ransom, John Crowe, 1888-1974, American poet and critic, b. Pulaski, Tenn., grad. Vanderbilt Univ. and studied at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. He is considered one of the great stylists of 20th-century American poetry. His verse, elegant and impersonal, is concerned with the breakdown of traditional order and stability in the modern world. His first volume of verse, Poems about God, appeared in 1919. It was followed by Chills and Fever (1924) and Two Gentlemen in Bonds (1926). He taught at Vanderbilt from 1914 to 1937, during which time he (with Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, and others) founded and edited the Fugitive (1922-25), a bimonthly literary magazine. One of the so-called new critics, he brought to 20th-century criticism a new respect for poetry as a medium, emphasizing close textual analysis and the importance of a poem as a poem. From 1937 to 1958 he taught at Kenyon College; there he founded the Kenyon Review, a magazine that established him as an influential and controversial critic and editor. In The World's Body (1938) and The New Criticism (1941) he voices his literary theories.

(born April 30, 1888, Pulaski, Tenn., U.S.—died July 4, 1974, Gambier, Ohio) U.S. poet and critic. Ransom attended and later taught at Vanderbilt University, where he became the leader of the Fugitives, a group of poets who shared a belief in the South and its agrarian traditions and published the influential journal The Fugitive (1922–25); he was among those Fugitives called Agrarian who contributed to I'll Take My Stand (1930). At Kenyon College, he founded and edited (1939–59) the Kenyon Review. His literary studies include The New Criticism (1941), which gave its name to an important critical movement (see New Criticism), and he became recognized as a leading theorist of the post-World War I Southern literary renaissance. His Selected Poems (1945; rev. ed., 1969) won the National Book Award.

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(born April 30, 1888, Pulaski, Tenn., U.S.—died July 4, 1974, Gambier, Ohio) U.S. poet and critic. Ransom attended and later taught at Vanderbilt University, where he became the leader of the Fugitives, a group of poets who shared a belief in the South and its agrarian traditions and published the influential journal The Fugitive (1922–25); he was among those Fugitives called Agrarian who contributed to I'll Take My Stand (1930). At Kenyon College, he founded and edited (1939–59) the Kenyon Review. His literary studies include The New Criticism (1941), which gave its name to an important critical movement (see New Criticism), and he became recognized as a leading theorist of the post-World War I Southern literary renaissance. His Selected Poems (1945; rev. ed., 1969) won the National Book Award.

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