From our current vantage point we can see that until the emergence of New Critics such as Rene Wellek, LA Richards, John Crowe Ransom, and Cleanth Brooks, philology and literary historicism provided the ideological foundation for the pedagogical practices informing the American college literary classroom. Prior to the success of New Criticism within the academy, entrenched scholars had been able to successfully squelch any theoretical inroads which might have been achieved by early generalist critics by characterizing their efforts as unscholarly, or as mere 'Impressionistic criticism". For example, in 1922 French scholar Andre Morize published a critique of literary criticism in which he urged a burgeoning class of new literary critics calling for a more theoretical approach to the explication of canonical works to base their "personal reaction on facts that have been historically verified': and that before criticizing a work, to be sure to "criticize established facts, indisputable chronology, correct texts, exact biographies (Graff 137)" Gerald Graff notes that such admonitions were likely to instill in college students the unstated assumption that criticism was an indulgence that should not be confused genuine knowledge or thought (137) In 1947, by which time New Criticism had largely vanquished "old Historicism" within the academy, Cleanth Brooks articulated the now prevalent critique of historically based literary criticism in the concluding remarks of "Criticism and Literary History: Marvell's Horation Ode"
I have argued that the critic needs the help of the historian--all the help that he can get; but I have insisted that the poem has to be read as a poem--that what it "says" is a question for the critic to answer, and that no amount of historical evidence as such can finally determine what the poem says (222)
The oppositional statements of Morize and Brooks neatly encapsulate the "debate" which occurred within the academy through much of the first half of this century between the philologists and literary historians and the emerging theorists, with New Critic Brooks's statement illustrative of the eventual triumph of New Criticism within the academy. While a paper discussing the relative merits of each position would call for a much more in-depth historical review than this essay hopes to accomplish, a close analysis of some of the key controversies articulated within the mini-debate between Cleanth Brooks and Douglas Bush provides a means to examine some of the crucial institutional and theoretical assumptions held by traditional literary historians and the New Critics.
Cleanth Brooks's essay, "Criticism and Literary History: Marvell's Horation Ode" while undoubtedly a tour de force demonstration of the New Critical practice of a close reading of the text which was by the time of its publication in 1947 an accepted and widespread pedagogical practice within the American academy, is also an undeniable indictment of the academy's still entrenched philologists and literary historians Brooks begins his essay with a peremptory dismissal of their scholarly methodology. "If we follow the orthodox procedure, the obvious way to understand the "Ode" is to ascertain by historical evidence--by letters and documents of all kinds--what Marvell really thought of Cromwell..(l99)" Brooks goes on to dispel any notion that such a method will yield any meaningful insight into the nature of the poetic work as he invokes New Critical theory relative to the relationship between authorial intention and the completed work. "It is a commonplace that the poet sometimes writes better than he knows, and alas, on occasion, writes worse than he knows (200)" Brooks then draws a sharp distinction between the task that the "critic" undertakes relative to interpreting poetry and the mode of criticism undertaken by the literary historian He insists it is the critic's task to answer questions that the historians, due to the inherent limitations of an historical methodology which attempted to derive poetic meaning based upon historical facts and biographical data did not address ft was the job of the formalist critic Brooks writes, to answer "the kind of question which we finally have to face and answer .a problem of poetic organization (204)." Brooks suggests that if the critic were to err and follow a strictly scholarly approach in attempting to apprehend the meaning of the text, surely problems in doing so would soon become "distressingly complicated". Alter delivering such disparaging remarks relative to the validity of historical literary scholarship, Brooks attempts to "soften the blow" by offering a grudging acknowledgment as to how the historical method might profitably aid the formalist critic
To put the matter into its simplest terms, the critic obviously must know what the words of the poem mean, something which immediately puts him in debt to the linguist; and since many of the words in this poem are proper nouns, in debt to the historian as well (204)."
Brooks closes his formalist, New Critical reading of the poem with a final condemnation of historical literary scholarship by posing a purely rhetorical question regarding whether or not his interpretation of the Ode represented what the poet, the Englishman Andrew Marvell born in 1621, who wrote the Ode in the summer of 1650, really had in mind Brooks retorts, 'I have tried to read the poem, "An Horation Ode", not Andrew Marvell's mind (220)" For while Brooks was ready to admit that what Marvell may have thought about Cromwell might be useful information, it could not override the greater importance of the intrinsic clues embedded within the poetic text which ultimately led to an explication of poetic meaning. Brooks argues that these intrinsics included "the role of the unconscious in the process of composition" as he openly acknowledged his complete acceptance of a key New Critical tenant, Wimsatt's and Beardley's Intentional Fallacy, concluding in the closing portion of the essay, "there is the between the two camps" were reconciled by the mutually agreed upon practice within the academy wherein 'antics dealt with literary works "in themselves" in an "intrinsic fashion" while historians dealt with their "extrinsic background"(l83)." Differences between scholars and critics who adhered to conflicting principles and who practiced widely different methods, were smoothed away by this apparent reconciliation of the two sides Their differences Graff notes, were explained away as merely differences of emphasis rather than any inherent conflicts in principles. Graff writes, "criticism and history, it was agreed, were complementary, and no sound literary education could forgo either(l83)" However, such a "separate but equal" compromise represented a dualism which Graff maintains had a profound effect on the academy as there "remained a tension at the conceptual level that mirrored unresolved institutional tensions(l84)" The contributions of the historians Graff argues, had been seriously diminished by this time Certainly Brooks's discussion in "Criticism and Literary History" fully illustrates this assertion Graff maintains that the ascendancy of New Criticism within the academy had pushed the literary historians so far into the background that further evolution of historical literary scholarship was seriously compromised. The historians were seen as providing "nonliterary references" which did little to explicate the meaning of the poetic text Graff posits that the New Critics' reluctance to accept the work of specialized scholars seems to have stemmed from "an unreasonable fear that if a poem's meaning is allowed to depend on such evidence its universality and hence its value will have been diminished(192)" Because disagreements between scholars and critics had not been merely reconciled, the college literary curriculum was left with what Graff has characterized as a "symptomatic compromise" wherein "the course or sequence of courses from an institutional standpoint was that while it relieved both the scholars and the critics of the burden of discussing and perhaps resolving some of their major theoretical differences, it did little to educate undergraduates as to the ideological battles swirling around them in the forties and fifties Graff argues that had the scholars and critics been forced to "thrash out their differences," they may well have left many issues unresolved or only "illustrated the incommensurability of their outlooks (193)" However, even if these were the unfortunate results of such an effort, Graff maintains such results would have been "more instructive than the silent tradeoffs and negotiated settlements that actually ensued (194)" Graft further notes that because the debates which occurred over old historicism and new criticism were conducted primarily in the graduate schools, journals, and conferences of the day, they failed to reach the university undergraduate literature classrooms where they might have illuminated the pedagogical practices conducted at the time. Graff himself a product of these times, ruefully concludes, "The English major I completed, though respectable and up to standard in every way, managed to keep me innocent of issues that might have given my study the context it lacked(194)"
In 1952 the "Sewanee Review" published Douglas Bush's "Old Historicist" response to Cleanth Brooks's reading of the "Horation Ode". As such, it represents a stance which refuses to accept the theoretical assumptions or pedagogical practices of the New Critics, its tone is defiantly scholarly from the outset as Bush notes in his opening sentence that the "Horation Ode" is commonly seen as the embodiment of two usually distinct poetic modes, the classical and the "metaphysical", while further commenting, "For all its metaphysical texture and originality, it is the nearest approach in English to the gravitas of Horace's patriotic odes (363). Such a statement assumes that readers or students share Bush's scholarly orientation as it implies they posses a thorough understanding ofpoetic forms, Latin, and classical ancient literature Bush goes on to argue for the superiority ofthe historical method by launching an attack on New Critical assumptions as he states in the opening paragraph ofthe essay that if we are to read the poem as poetry, it is necessary that we "also read it as an historical document, for we must ask what Marvell is saying, in and between the lines, about Cromwe11(363)." Bush maintained that Brooks, through his close reading of the text in which ambiguities, complexities, and ironies were found where none existed, had stepped well beyond the boundaries of acceptable critical inquiry, and that his'~Yrenching" ofthe meaning ofvarious words or metaphors within the text had precluded him from attaining a "disinterested inquiry into the evidence provided by the poem (363)." In fact Bush maintains, it would be more accurate to say that Brooks forced the "evidence" to "fit an unspoken assumption--namely, that a sensitive, penetrating, and well-balanced mind like Marvell could not really have admired a crude, single-minded man of action like Cromwell" (364).
But what is the nature of the "evidence" to Bush is referring in this passage? It could be argued that the "evidence" Bush references accentuates precisely where the theoretical and institutional assumptions of the critics and scholars of the time were in dispute For Brooks, the "evidence" is intrinsic to the text. It lies in the "unconscious hints" which are articulated through the ambiguities, ironies, paradoxical statements and striking metaphors embedded within the tea Brooks would maintain that the conflicts and tensions which are invariably present within a truly poetic work must be "unifies' ifthe poem is to be successful as a poem He would further argue that historical and biographical data, while useful in helping the reader understand factors extrinsic to the text which might illuminate proper nouns, or the etymology ofvarious words, is not the type of information that allows us to "read the poem as a poem." This orientation is fundamentally different from the implicit assumptions articulated through Bush's often repeated plea throughout his essay to read the "evidence" through a careful analysis of how Marvell, the Cavalier Englishman of 1650 might have thought about or viewed the events surrounding Cromwell's rise to power. Bush's essay is liberally sprinkled with statements such as, "I doubt Marvell, whatever he privately felt is here consciously ...", "...we need not assume that Marvell's view of events remained unaltered...", or "...we really must accept the unpalatable fact that he wrote as an Englishman of 1650...", etc Therefore, it is obvious that Bush and Brooks were at loggerheads from the outset, each arguing his case from premises the other would never accept, and in doing so, effectively illustrating the conflicts existing within the academy which were never truly resolved as Gerald Graff argues in Professing Literature.
At any rate, Bush continues to apply the tenets ofthe traditional historical criticism ofthe time to his polemic against Brooks's reading ofthe "Horation Ode" throughout his essay. One of the more interesting indictments leveled against Brooks is Bush's labeling of him as a "modem liberal" who insists upon painting Cromwell, (a sort of Brooksonian "Puritan Stalin" ), in the worse possible light. While Brooks maintained that his reading ofthe Ode illustrated a "unified total attitude" in which the speaker both admires and condemns Cromwell, Bush saw Brooks's depiction of Cromwell as overwhelmingly, and unreasonably negative. Calling upon historical data to underscore this point, he argues,
if the people in 1681 would have read the poem with Mr. Brooks's eyes, as in the main a condemnation of Cromwell, there would not have been much reason for the poems being cut out of the first edition of Marvell, since such a view of Cromwell would have been welcome to the Restoration (364).
Bush's labeling of Brooks as a "modern liberal" throughout the essay appeared to puzzle even Brooks who commented in his reply to Bush's essay, "But the title of liberal, alas, is one that I am scarcely entitled to claim: I am more often called a reactionary, and I have been called a proto-fascist (131)." So what are we to make of Bush's accusation? John Paul Russo suggests that Bush may have been considering Brooks's "need for moral absolutes (Royalism, Anglicanism)" which derived from Brooks's 'political and religious position: reactionary agrarianism, religious orthodoxy, contempt for bourgeois capitalism (214)." Russo further postulates that since Bush himself was a centrist and an Anglo-Catholic, Brooks's apparent, the "Puritan Stalin," might be construed as "liberal" (214). But perhaps the meaning position against Cromwell of "modern liberal" is simpler. Bush's meaning here is actually quite logical if we consider the institutional implications of the theoretical and pedagogical practices of critic Brooks and scholar Bush. To Bush, the traditionalist, schooled in and practitioner ofthe more institutionally conservative tradition ofhistorical literary scholarship, a critic such as Brooks who openly advocated and practiced an ahistorical criticism within and without the classroom, could indeed be perceived as a "modern liberal". Brooks himself, writing well after the heyday of New Criticism within the academy, defended New Criticism's calculatedly ahistorical roots, explaining that biographical and historical material had been deliberately left out of the first edition of Understanding Poefry. He cites the opening comments for teachers which contained the following warning:
This book has been conceived on the assumption that ifpoetry is worth teaching at all it is worth teaching as poetry. The temptation to make a substitute for the poem as the object of study is usually overwhelming (43).
Brooks then rather heavy-handedly delineates the common pedagogical errors typically encountered within literary historians' college literary classrooms which precluded students from learning how to properly read the poem as a poem: paraphrasing logical and narrative content, studying biographical and historical materials, and finally, offering inspirational or didactic interpretations (44).
"Criticism and Literary History", besides launching a broadside against traditional historical literary criticism, also offered a firll, New Critical reading ofMarvell's "Horation Ode". Bush, in his response to Brooks's reading of "An Horation Ode" offered a point by point literary historian's refutation to Brooks's interpretation of the poem. Therefore, in 1953, the "Sewanee Review" published Cleanth Brooks's reply to Douglas Bush's polemic against his New Critical reading ofthe Ode. Beginning his essay with introductoty commentary in which he offers New Critical counter-arguments to Bush's scholarly interpretations of Marvell's text, Brooks quickly moves to what he correctly identifies as the real point of Bush's essay. Noting that Bush was not out to "argue over a few niceties over the interpretation of a poem", Brooks states, "Mr. Bush means to vindicate the biographer and the historian against the mere critic and to show that "historical conditioning has a corrective as well as positive value"(l30)." The remainder ofthe final essay offers Brook's response to Bush's challenge to New Critical theoretical assumptions and pedagogical practices.
Brooks first addresses Bush's accusation that his reading of the Ode was indicative of his ideological biases which in turn, apparently led him to "wrench" unsubstantiated meanings from the text of poem. To this accusation Brooks replies, "The historical method has its own temptations, among them to explore, with insufficient "history" the biases of one's opponent (131)." Mr. Bush is simply wrong Brooks states, on the question of bias as it relates to his reading ofthe poem. This assertion is difficult to accept. Cleanth Brooks, educated at Vanderbilt under the mentorship of John Crowe Ransom, collaborator with the Agrarian Movement's Fugitive member Allen Tate, and a man who defined T.S. Eliot as his "cultural hero" (Duvall 2), certainly held ideological biases that were articulated within his reading of Marvell's "Horation Ode", but to explicitly and comprehensively examine these ideological assumptions would require another entire essay! However, the ideological conflicts between Brooks and Bush discussed thus far in this essay do illuminate another ofBrooks's biases, namely, his New Critical disdain for the type oftraditional historical criticism and scholarship practiced within the academy during the forties and fifties. Certainly Brooks's highly reductionist rhetoric relative to Bush's scholarship serves to render all historical literary criticism as Graffwrites, to little more than "pounds and slices of data" rather than a rich historical process (Graff 188)."
Brooks next considers Bush's allegation that he had ignored relevant historical evidence when it disputed his reading ofthe poem, and conversely, used historical evidence when its served his purposes to do so. There is some basis within the text that lends credence to this accusation. For example, Brooks begins "Criticism and Literary History" with an elaborate discussion concerning who Marvell was associating with immediately before and after the Ode was written, later offers a discussion of how the Earl of Clarendon's description of Cromwell closely echoed Royalists, and finally, adds a footnote to the conclusion ofthe essay which offers yet further "proof' that the Ode was "circulating among Royalists--not Puritans--in the early 1650's (222)." Bush maintains that Brooks skewed the historical evidence so much that to accept Brooks's reading of the Ode, Marvetl would have to have been lifted out of his own age and into Brook's, to which Brooks replied, "I am not concerned to lift Marvell out of his age into ours; I am concerned with what transcends his age. I am concerned with what is universal in the poem, and that means that I am concerned with more than seeing the "Horation Ode" as merely a document of its age." Statements such as this which celebrate a mode of criticism which looks beyond the historical context in which the poem was written in order to uncover the universal and transcendent nature ofliterature, seem to articulate the New Critics' main opposition to the traditional historical criticism of their times. Of the New Critical practice which has indeed passed into history itself, along with its once widely accepted te~s which are now merely studied, but certainly no longer taught in the college literary classroom, Weimann states, "it would be a gross oversimplification to imply that the new critical view of traditional literary history was entirely based on a series of formalist fallacies (40). New Critics such as Brooks according to Weimann, "raised a number of serious issues and asked several penetrating questions that a new approach would not wish to easily dismiss (40)."
Today, many years after an historical moment in which New Critical theorists had all but banished the scholars who practiced traditional literary history from the college literary classroom, a new historically based literary criticism is emerging within the academy. As was the case during the height of New Criticism, the doctrines of the "New Historicism" are being discussed within the journals, conferences and literary classrooms of our day. Echoing the debates which ensued in our not so distant past concerning the role of historical scholarship in the reading ofliterary texts, Jean Howard admonishes present-day critics and teachers alike who are applying New Historicism to their reading ofliterary texts that "if those readings are based on untenable or unexamined assumptions about literature and history, then they are merely a form of nostalgia and not a serious attempt to explore what it means to attempt an historical criticism in a postmodern era (19)." It would seem then, that there are still lessons to be learned from past debates over the merits of an historically based literary criticism.