88
RICHAitO P61RIER
without doing any research-and no one need wonder therefore at the
unwonted dialectical vigor displayed by otherwise placid teachers of
literature. But any candidate will win against no candidate, and there
was no substantial alternative to
Understanding Poetry.
Despite opposi–
tions, the book, and imitations of it, came to dominate the teaching of
introductory courses in literature both in colleges and, increasingly, in
secondary schools.
Brooks and Warren offers, then, an extraordinary example, as does
Samuelson's book in economics, of the potential influence of a textbook.
There have even been accusations that
Understanding Poetry
and the
New Critical bias it expresses has had a dire political effect on a whole
generation of educated people. Thus, it might be charged, the Southern
Agrarianism of Brooks and Warren (the persons, not the book) and of
their colleagues, Ransom and Tate, can be located in their praise of the
"organic wholeness" and self-sufficiency of a poem. What
really
is being
praised, of course, are those organic (i.e. Southern) communities whose
enriching interconnections are threatened by intrusions from the out–
side, as from the Constitution of these not-so-United States. I am in–
venting, rather than quoting an argument, but the general proposition
is familiar enough: close reading of the text "by itself" is somehow
related
to
the conservatism which distinguishes literate people since the
Second WorId War from those liberal people of the thirties and early
forties.
The kind of text which is fast replacing Brooks and Warren in the
class room is represented, with a badness that cries for attention, by a
recent promotion from Random House:
Bear, Man, and God: Seven
Approaches to William Faulkner's The Bear,
edited by Frances Lee
Utley, Lynn Z. Bloom, and Arthur F. Finney. This particular book
will
have nothing like the influence, academic or otherwise, of
Understanding
Poetry.
And if it has any political implications they can only be of the
cautionary kind, warning the citizen that he dare not form an opinion
about anything unless he knows all the background and the opinions
of all the experts. The book includes Faulkner's short novel
The Bear
and surrounds it with materials apparently essential for the reader:
essays written over the years by a number of critics, bits and pieces of
fiction, biography, and of historical and anthropological studies. The
book is a lurid example of one of the ventures meant to dislodge the
New Criticism, as represented by
Understanding Poetry,
from its pre–
eminence.
The nature of this particular counter-movement is given some
official sanction in a recent publication distributed by the Modern
