1952: Justification by Works

Extract

Some of the writers whose remarks I have quoted may belong to the school often referred to as the New Critics. At any rate, if we can trust their frequently expressed disapproval of current scholarship, the New Critics would not disagree with those remarks. I do not wish to be intolerant of those whose intolerance I deprecate. There is more than one fruitful approach to a work of literature, and while some of the New Criticism seems to me to be quite sterile I am ready to welcome any method of interpretation which leads to the fuller understanding and enjoyment of a work of literature. What I am not willing to admit is that the New Criticism is the only true source of illumination. Behind the poem is the poet, and whatever in his own life or in the life of his time helps us to understand the man helps us to understand his work. Literary history is a frame which enhances the work of art, or, if I may change the figure, a means of displaying it, a setting which permits us to view it in proper perspective. Without it we should be like the historian who would interpret Magna Carta or the Declaration of Independence without reference to the conditions which called these documents into being. Besides this, literary history as a part of the history of man is as legitimate an object of interest and as worthy of study as political or economic history, or the history of science or art. And the history of literature has been made possible only by the patient labors of scholars who have quarried and shaped the stone out of which the edifice has been built. We need criticism and we need the historical perspective which investigation makes possible. Let us seek for a fruitful union of the two without disparaging the share which each contributes to the common end.