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Understanding Criticism: an Institutional Ecology of Usamerican Literary Criticism

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Understanding Criticism: an Institutional Ecology of Usamerican Literary Criticism Understanding Criticism: An Institutional Ecology of USAmerican Literary Criticism By Andrew Joseph Hines Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in English August, 2015 Nashville, Tennessee Approved: Michael Kreyling, Ph.D. Houston A. Baker Jr., Ph.D. Dana D. Nelson, Ph.D. Jonathan Flatley, Ph.D. Copyright © 2015 by Andrew Hines All Rights Reserved ii For Keegan iii Acknowledgments Institutions and pedagogical actions play a pivotal, but often forgotten role in the development of literary criticism and theory. In some sense, the goal of this dissertation is to account for both the effects of and development of this gap in disciplinary history and in the process of doing literary criticism. Yet, if there is any genre of academic writing that is a consistent exception to this rule, it is the acknowledgments: a place where a critic tracks her encounters with institutional life and the unforgettable, invaluable actions of mentors, colleagues, and friends. Such entries are always woefully partial. Still acknowledgments remain the thing that many compose as they walk to and from campus. To imagine the ways we can give thanks to those who made the work possible is to imagine the completion of the work. Without this act of gratitude, the work could not be. I began this project as an undergraduate in the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania. Herman Beavers introduced me to the Southern Agrarians and encouraged me to pursue how that group’s ideas impacted their literature and the literary criticism they would come to develop. Jed Esty and Paul Saint-Amour played a large part in opening my eyes to the profession, its potentials, as well as its pitfalls. More importantly than that, as classrooms have become conference halls and quizo forays, Jed and Paul consistently remind me what kind of scholar I hope to be, both through their work and their good humor, generosity, and care. Despite my longing for Philadelphia, there was no better place to work on this dissertation than in the Department of English at Vanderbilt University. There I was met with support and encouragement from a lively community of graduate students and faculty. I have learned so much from conversations in class, at lectures, and in the hallways of Old Benson with Jay Clayton, Colin Dayan, Jen Fay, Teresa Goddu, Vera Kutzinski, Hortense Spillers, Ben Tran, iv and Mark Wollaeger. I am especially grateful to Scott Juengel for his interest in how to teach the catastrophe surrounding the American university and his tireless effort to make higher education somehow more hospitable. Donna Caplan made sure I had everything in order. Time with my undergraduate students has sharpened my sense that what happens in the classroom is absolutely vital to the formation of literary theory. My dissertation committee has gone above and beyond by absolutely every measure. Jonathan Flatley, as an outside committee member, helped me to see the true expanse of what was missing in disciplinary history and the warmth of a bowl of borscht on a rainy New York afternoon. Dana Nelson taught me to write a declarative sentence. Every reader will be grateful that she did. Houston Baker pushed my thinking to its limits and then showed me how to go further. Every time I “reflect” on our discussions – whether they were about Addison Gayle, Monk’s Underground, or the latest meal – I learn that there is more to consider. Finally, there is Michael Kreyling. There is nary a footnote or a thought that hovers between sentences that he hasn’t pursued with me fully in discussion. In my experience, Michael has been open to every possible version of the project and I am fortunate for all of the ways that he has directed me toward the better ones. A number of my fellow graduate students at Vanderbilt have tolerated my constant call to carefully consider the profession’s insistence about close reading. Such tolerance has been exercised in seminar rooms and on basketball courts. Thank you especially to Elizabeth Barnett, R.J. Boutelle, Kat DeGuzman, Matt Eatough, Cari Hovanec, Megan Minarich, Aubrey Porterfield, and Brian Rejack. Donika Ross and I had a lot of feelings over a lot of tacos. My exchanges with Hubert Cook have left a lasting impression, especially our discussions about Fred Moten’s “Case of Blackness” essay. I am also grateful to a number of colleagues and dear v friends who I met at the School for Criticism and Theory, including Claire Barber, Ryan Carr, Ali Dean, Jeff Neilson, Stephen Pasqualina, and Cody Reis. Rachel Sagner Buurma, Laura Heffernan, Evan Kindley, John Marx, and Jeff Williams have also provided support by doing one or more of the following: read drafts, asked engaging questions and provided encouragement, and talked over coffee in seemingly all corners of the country. I have also received an incredible amount of institutional support from the Graduate School at Vanderbilt University. Much of the archival research I have done for this project would not have been possible without the support of a Summer Research Award, a University Graduate Fellowship, and a College of Arts and Science Humanities and Social Sciences Dissertation Fellowship. I’m deeply appreciative, too, for my year as the Department of English Fellow at the Vanderbilt Writing Studio. Gary Jaeger, John Bradley, and Elizabeth Covington destabilized all of my notions about writing and helped me to resolve them. Mona Frederick and the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities sponsored the Modernism Working Group, which I organized with Aubrey Porterfield, where I tested many of my ideas. Archivists at the following libraries have also been integral during many phases of the project: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University; Princeton Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University; Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library; Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin; Swarthmore College Peace Collection Swarthmore College; Rare Book and Special Collections Reading Room, Library of Congress; and Special Collections and University Archives, Vanderbilt University. I was fortunate to spend a year in Oakland, California while finishing my writing. There I was met with open arms by a number of graduate students and faculty at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley, I was lucky vi enough to meet Megan O’Connor and Erin Greer, who ran the Frankfurt School Working Group together. Kendra Dority sent some key postcards from Santa Cruz in the final hours. Ben Wiebracht, an old friend from Penn, endured atrocious traffic to visit me from Stanford. And, of course, there was “Group”: Matt Suazo may have been the only other member, but his commentary on my drafts sustained my writing as much as his red beans and rice sustained me. My family, especially my parents Marcy and Jack Hines, has been there every step of the way, providing love and much needed encouragement. More than anyone, however, this dissertation simply would not be what it is – nor would it be – without Keegan Cook Finberg. Writing this dissertation has been a labor of love, but only because it has been nourished from her brilliant and careful attention to every word. Anything that is good in these pages is only so because of her. Without her, I simply would not be. A shorter version of chapter three will appear under the title “Vehicles of Periodization: Melvin B. Tolson, Allen Tate, and the New Critical Police” in a forthcoming issue of Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts scheduled for publication by Wayne State University Press. Nashville / Oakland May 2015 vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page DEDICATION ............................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................................. iv Introduction: The Cause and the Cure ............................................................................................ 1 Against New Criticism’s Anti-Blackness ............................................................................... 13 Always Provincialize! ............................................................................................................. 17 From “Ecology of Knowledge” to an Institutional Ecology ................................................... 23 Organization and Scale ........................................................................................................... 32 I. The Beginning and the End of Criticism ................................................................................. 39 The Burden of Criticism and the Ideal “New Critic” ............................................................. 48 The Bollingen Controversy and the Emergence of Criticism ................................................. 57 New Criticism Now ................................................................................................................ 76 New Modernist Studies ....................................................................................................... 80 The Descriptive Turn .......................................................................................................... 84 II. Parker Tyler: Toward a Minor Criticism ................................................................................
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