Variety
Report from the Academy
T
H E CHIEF PURPOSE
of the de–
.partments of literature in Amer–
ican graduate schools is to teach
prospective teachers how to avoid
discussing literature. There are
several ways of escape. One may
collect statistics-a Brown profes–
sor has recently been engaged in
collecting all the allusions to Ed–
mund Spenser in seventeenth-cen–
tury European literature. One may
assemble "parallel passages" show–
ing, let us say, that Milton was
"influenced" by Grotius. More rel–
evantly, one may study the socio–
economic background of literature
or the lives of the writers. But in
recent years, great numbers of
graduate scholars have turned to
the History of Ideas, proclaiming
their freedom from less elevated
approaches (in graduate schools
one always "approaches"; one does
not touch, go into, or pass
through).
This movement (or the part of
it which I wish to discuss here)
depends upon an uneasy alliance
between the philosophers and the
literary scholars. Since academic
philosophy is never very sure about
what it can meaningfully concern
itself with and is hence continually
in search of a subject matter and
since literary scholarship can use
the methods of philosophy as an
approach to literature, each has
something to offer the other. The
philosophers, however, insist on
cracking the whip and in general
the literature teachers let them do it.
The most influential figure in
the History of Ideas movement has
been
A.
0. Lovejoy of Johns Hop–
kins, whose
Great Chain of Being
( 1936) is taken to be a latter-day
Revelation of what constitutes phi–
losophy, scholarship, and criticism
in English departments all over
the country. The book set crowds
of scholars to ransacking European
literature in search of "plenitude,"
"continuity," and "gradation," the
three principles of the chain of
being.
Lovejoy is the Chairman of the
Board of Editors of the
Journal
of the History of Ideas;
the other
editors are faculty members at
Harvard, Columbia, and City Col–
lege. In his manifesto (see the first
issue of the
Journal,
January
1940)
Lovejoy laid down certain cate–
gories under which literature may
be studied. One may, for example,
study the influence of philosophers
on literature; Melville, let's say,
read Plato and consequently as–
sumes a relationship with Plotinus,
Ficino, Petrarch, Emerson, Shelley,
and Benjamin Jowett. One may
look into the influence of science
on literature; Melville was influ–
enced by Buffon but (to use the
language of professional scholar-
