Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T17:25:32.620Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

F. O. Matthiessen and the Future of American Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

M. D. Walhout
Get access

Extract

Now that the Soviet empire has collapsed, it is time for a fresh look at the victims of the oppositional “Cold War criticism” that came to dominate American Studies in the 1980s. Hoping to stem the tide of the Reagan Revolution, the “New Americanists,” as Frederick Crews dubbed the academic heirs of the New Left, instigated a sweeping critique of their own discipline, charging the founders of American Studies with complicity in imperialism abroad and McCarthyism at home. Of all the founders, none was interrogated more thoroughly than F. O. Matthiessen, long regarded as the very model of a critic for whom radical politics and academic criticism were not mutually exclusive commitments. As late as the early 1980s, critics were still hailing Matthiessen as a pioneer in the development of American Marxist criticism. Frederick Stern, for example, asserted that Matthiessen's “methodology as a critic, though not in any pure sense Marxist…, comes closer to some of the distinguished efforts of the Marxist critics of Europe than does the work of just about any other major American critic of Matthiessen's time” (44). Similarly, Leo Marx argued that “in his subtle treatment of the interplay between literature and society, Matthiessen in a sense anticipated the development of a more supple Marxist cultural and literary theory since its liberation from the rigid doctrinal cast of the Stalin era” (256). Yet it was also in the early 1980s that the first blow to Matthiessen's reputation was struck in The American Renaissance Reconsidered, a collection of papers from the English Institute whose title, echoing that of Matthiessen's magnum opus, announced the beginning of an ambitious campaign to revise the history of American Studies – a campaign that proved to be quicker and easier than anyone could have expected.

Type
Research Article
Information
Prospects , Volume 22 , October 1997 , pp. 1 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

WORKS CITED

Arac, Jonathan. “F. O. Matthiessen: Authorizing an American Renaissance.” The American Renaissance Reconsidered. Ed. Michaels, Walter Benn and Pease, Donald E.. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985: 90–112.Google Scholar
Auden, W. H. “The Means of Grace.” Nation 06 2, 1941: 765–66.Google Scholar
Bellow, Saul. “Dreiser and the Triumph of Art.” Commentary 05 1951: 502–4.Google Scholar
Benes, Edvard. Masaryk's Path and Legacy. New York: Arno, 1971.Google Scholar
Bercovitch, Sacvan. “The Problem of Ideology in American Literary History.” Critical Inquiry 12 (Summer 1986): 631–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bergman, David. “F. O. Matthiessen: The Critic as Homosexual.” Raritan 9 (Spring 1990): 62–82.Google Scholar
Cain, William E.F. O. Matthiessen and the Politics of Criticism. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Cain, William E. “An Interview with Irving Howe.” American Literary History 1 (Fall 1989): 554–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chambers, Whitaker. Witness. New York: Random House, 1952.Google Scholar
Cheyfitz, Eric. “The Irresistableness of Great Literature.” American Literary History 6 (Fall 1994): 539–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cheyfitz, Eric. “Matthiessen's American Renaissance: Circumscribing the Revolution.” American Quarterly 41 (06 1989): 341–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. “Reinhold Niebuhr.” Grand Street 6 (Winter 1987): 197–212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crews, Frank. “Whose American Renaissance?” New York Review of Books 10 27, 1988: 68–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
“Faith for a Lenten Age.” Time 03 8, 1948: 70–79.Google Scholar
Fox, Richard Wightman. Reinhold Niebuhr: A Biography. New York: Harper, 1985; rept. 1987.Google Scholar
Gunn, Giles. F. O. Matthiessen: The Critical Achievement. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1975.Google Scholar
Hofstadter, Richard. “Native Sons of Our Literature.” Nation 04 28, 1951: 398.Google Scholar
Hook, Sidney. “The Faiths of Whittaker Chambers.” New York Times Book Review 05 25, 1952: 1, 34–35.Google Scholar
Hook, Sidney. “The New Failure of Nerve.” Partisan Review 10 (01–02 1943): 2–23.Google Scholar
Hook, Sidney. “Religion and the Intellectuals.” Partisan Review 17 (02 1950): 225–32.Google Scholar
Hook, Sidney. “Social Change and Original Sin: Answer to Niebuhr.” New Leader 11 8, 1941: 5–7.Google Scholar
Howe, Irving. “The Sentimental Fellow-Traveling of F. O. Matthiessen.” Partisan Review 15 (10 1948): 1125–29.Google Scholar
Hyde, Louis K., ed. Rat and the Devil: Journal Letters of F. O. Matthiessen and Russell Cheney. Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1978.Google Scholar
“Innocent Abroad.” Time 09 20, 1948: 112–13.Google Scholar
Koestler, Arthur. The Lotus and the Robot. New York: Macmillan, 1961.Google Scholar
Koestler, Arthur. The Yogi and the Commissar. New York: Macmillan, 1945.Google Scholar
Levin, Harry. “The Private Life of F. O. Matthiessen.” Memoirs of the Moderns. New York: New Directions, 1980: 218–30.Google Scholar
Lynn, Kenneth S. “F. O. Matthiessen.” Masters: Portraits of Great Teachers. Ed. Epstein, Joseph. New York: Basic, 1981: 106–16.Google Scholar
MacDonald, Dwight. Henry Wallace: The Man and the Myth. New York: Vanguard, 1948.Google Scholar
Marx, Leo. “‘Double Consciousness’ and the Cultural Politics of an American Critic.” The Pilot and the Passenger: Essays on Literature, Technology, and Culture in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988: 239–60.Google Scholar
Matthiessen, F. O.The Achievement of T. S. Eliot: An Essay on the Nature of Poetry. 3rd ed.New York: Oxford University Press, 1958.Google Scholar
Matthiessen, F. O.American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman. New York: Oxford University Press, 1941.Google Scholar
Matthiessen, F. O. “A Classic Study of America.” New York Times Book Review 04 15, 1945: 1, 30.Google Scholar
Matthiessen, F. O. “The Essays of Arthur Koestler.” New York Times Book Review 05 27, 1945: 1, 21.Google Scholar
Matthiessen, F. O.From the Heart of Europe. New York: Oxford University Press, 1948.Google Scholar
Matthiessen, F. O. “God, Mammon, and Mr. Dreiser.” New York Times Book Review 03 24, 1946: 1, 42–44.Google Scholar
Matthiessen, F. O.The James Family. New York: Knopf, 1948.Google Scholar
Matthiessen, F. O. “A Liberal Firm in His Convictions Contrasts Puritanism and Democ-racy.” PM 01 21, 1945: m15–16.Google Scholar
Matthiessen, F. O.Theodore Dreiser. N.p.: William Sloane, 1951.Google Scholar
Michaels, Walter Benn, and Pease, Donald E., eds. The American Renaissance Reconsidered. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Mumford, Lewis. “The Aftermath of Utopianism.” Christianity and Crisis 03 24, 1941: 2–7.Google Scholar
Murphy, Geraldine. “The Politics of Reading Billy Budd.” American Literary History 1 (Summer 1989): 361–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murphy, Geraldine. “Romancing the Center: Cold War Politics and Classic American Litera-ture.” Poetics Today 9 (1988): 737–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Niebuhr, Reinhold. “Is There a Revival of Religion?” New York Times Magazine 11 19, 1950: 13, 60–64.Google Scholar
Niebuhr, Reinhold. “Mr. Wallace's Errors.” Christianity and Crisis 10 18, 1946: 1–2.Google Scholar
Niebuhr, Reinhold. The Nature and Destiny of Man. 2 vols. New York: Scribner's, 1941.Google Scholar
Pease, Donald E. “Moby Dick and the Cold War.” The American Renaissance Reconsidered. Ed. Michaels, Walter Benn and Pease, Donald E.. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985: 113–55.Google Scholar
Perry, Ralph Barton. Puritanism and Democracy. 1944; rept. New York: Harper, 1964.Google Scholar
Reising, Russell J. “Reconstructing Parrington.” American Quarterly 41 (03 1989): 155–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sandel, Michael J. “Democrats and Community.” New Republic 02 22, 1988: 20–23.Google Scholar
Sandel, Michael J. “Freedom of Conscience or Freedom of Choice?” Articles of Faith, Articles of Peace: The Religious Liberty Clauses and the American Public Philosophy. Ed. Hunter, James Davidson and Guinness, Os. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1990.Google Scholar
Sarton, May. Faithful Are the Wounds. 1955; rept. New York: Norton, 1985.Google Scholar
Schlesinger, Arthur M. JrThe Age of Jackson. Boston: Little, Brown, 1945.Google Scholar
Schlesinger, Arthur M. JrThe Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom. Cambridge, Mass.: Riverside, 1949; rept. 1962.Google Scholar
Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr “Whittaker Chambers and His Witness.” Saturday Review 05 24, 1952: 8–10, 39–41.Google Scholar
Siebers, Tobin. Cold War Criticism and the Politics of Skepticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
“Sin Rediscovered.” Time 03 24, 1941: 38–40.Google Scholar
Stern, Frederick C.F. O. Matthiessen: Christian Socialist as Critic. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981.Google Scholar
Sweezy, Paul M., and Huberman, Leo, eds. F. O. Matthiessen: A Collective Portrait. New York: Henry Schuman, 1950.Google Scholar
Tocqueville, Alexis de.Democracy in America. New York: Knopf, 1945.Google Scholar
Trilling, Lionel. “Dreiser and the Liberal Mind.” Nation 04 20, 1946: 466–72.Google Scholar
Trilling, LionelThe Middle of the Journey. 1947; rept. New York: Avon, 1975.Google Scholar
Wald, Alan. The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Wallace, Henry A. “Practical Religion in the World of Tomorrow.” The Christian Bases of World Order. Nashville: Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1943: 9–20.Google Scholar
Wallace, Henry A.Statesmanship and Religion. New York: Round Table, 1934.Google Scholar
Weinstein, Allen. Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case. New York: Knopf, 1978.Google Scholar
White, George Abbott. “Ideology and literature: American Renaissance and F. O. Matthiessen.” Literature in Revolution. Ed. White, George Abbott and Newman, Charles. New York: Holt, 1972: 430–500.Google Scholar
Wills, Garry. “Timestyle.” National Review 08 3, 1957: 129–30, 143.Google Scholar
Wreszin, Michael. “Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Scholar-Activist in Cold War America: 1946–1956.” Salmagundi 63–64 (Spring-Summer 1984): 255–85.Google Scholar