American literary critics

American literary critics
Name	American literary critics
Occupation	Critics, scholars
Era	19th–21st century

American literary critics

American literary critics are commentators and scholars who analyze, interpret, and evaluate literature within the United States context, engaging with authors such as Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Toni Morrison, and Ernest Hemingway. They write in venues ranging from journals like The New Yorker and The Atlantic to university presses associated with institutions such as Harvard University, Columbia University, Yale University, and University of Chicago. Their work intersects with influential movements and events including Transcendentalism, Harlem Renaissance, Modernism (literature), Civil Rights Movement, and debates around the Vietnam War.

Overview and Definition

In the United States, literary critics such as F. O. Matthiessen, Lionel Trilling, C. Vann Woodward, Cleanth Brooks, and Helen Vendler provide close readings of texts by figures like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ralph Ellison. Institutions including Modern Language Association, American Comparative Literature Association, National Endowment for the Humanities, and presses like Oxford University Press and Princeton University Press shape standards for peer review and pedagogy. Critics publish in periodicals such as Partisan Review, The New Republic, Poetry (magazine), and PMLA, and their definitions of value are informed by events like the Scopes Trial and movements such as Women's suffrage in the United States.

Historical Development

Early American criticism emerged alongside authors like Benjamin Franklin, Washington Irving, and James Fenimore Cooper and institutions such as Harvard College and Yale College. Nineteenth‑century formations included responses to Transcendentalism led by Ralph Waldo Emerson and institutional reviews tied to the American Antiquarian Society. In the twentieth century, schools associated with New Criticism—figures such as John Crowe Ransom and Allen Tate—and voices from the Harlem Renaissance—including Alain Locke—reoriented attention toward form and cultural context. Postwar debates involved critics like Susan Sontag, Jacques Barzun, Harold Bloom, and Edward Said (for comparative influence), responding to the impact of World War II, the Cold War, and decolonization. Late twentieth and early twenty‑first century developments feature work influenced by postmodernism, postcolonialism, and movements such as Black Lives Matter and academic responses to the Culture Wars (United States).

Major Figures and Schools

School and figure names prominent in the field include New Criticism proponents like William K. Wimsatt and Cleanth Brooks, biographical and historicist critics such as Lionel Trilling and F. O. Matthiessen, and theoretical adopters like Frederick Crews and Paul de Man (comparative relevance). Key twentieth‑century scholars include Henry Louis Gates Jr., Annette Kolodny, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (influence on American studies), Roland Barthes (transatlantic impact), and Martha Nussbaum (ethical criticism). Diverse schools—New Historicism associated with Stephen Greenblatt, Feminist literary criticism advanced by Elaine Showalter and Kate Millett, Queer theory articulated by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Ecocriticism linked to Lawrence Buell—have shaped curricula at University of California, Berkeley, Princeton University, Brown University, and Stanford University.

Critical Approaches and Methodologies

Methods employed include close reading as practiced by I. A. Richards and Cleanth Brooks, historicism found in work by Stephen Greenblatt and Richard H. Brodhead, textual editing exemplified by G. Thomas Tanselle and David Wallace, and theory‑driven analysis drawing on Marxist theory as seen in Fredric Jameson’s comparative reach and psychoanalytic criticism influenced by Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. Critics engage archival practices at repositories like the Library of Congress, apply digital humanities tools propagated by Stanford University and Digital Humanities, and deploy cultural studies approaches developed at University of Birmingham and adapted in U.S. programs.

Influence on American Literature and Culture

Critics have shaped canons—promoting writers such as Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Sylvia Plath, and Langston Hughes—and influenced literary prizes like the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and Nobel Prize in Literature nominations. Their reviews in outlets including The New York Review of Books, Harper's Magazine, and The Atlantic have affected book sales, academic hiring at institutions like Columbia University and University of Pennsylvania, and public debates during events like the McCarthy era and the Culture Wars (United States). Critics also intervene in curricular standards for programs accredited by organizations such as the Modern Language Association and help curate exhibitions at museums including the Library of Congress and Smithsonian Institution.

Institutional Roles and Teaching

Many critics hold faculty appointments in departments at Harvard University, Yale University, Columbia University, University of Chicago, University of California, Berkeley, and liberal arts colleges like Amherst College and Williams College. They serve as editors of journals such as PMLA, Critical Inquiry, Representations, and American Literature, direct centers like the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and the Hubbard Center for Faculty Development, and advise graduate programs leading to PhD training. Administrative roles include positions on boards of the National Endowment for the Humanities and fellowships at the Johns Hopkins University‑affiliated Peabody Institute.

Contemporary Debates and Trends

Current debates involve discussions of canon diversification promoted by scholars like Cornel West, Elizabeth Alexander, and Ibram X. Kendi, methodological shifts toward the digital humanities at institutions such as Brown University and MIT, tensions around free speech highlighted at University of Chicago and Princeton University, and reassessments of pedagogy amid crises like the COVID‑19 pandemic and controversies over tenure reviewed by the American Association of University Professors. Emerging trends include interdisciplinary work linking literature with climate studies at Columbia University, race studies influenced by the Black Lives Matter movement, and global approaches shaped by conferences hosted by the Modern Language Association and the American Comparative Literature Association.

Category:American literary criticism