The Chicago School

Critics and Criticism: Ancient and Modern (1952) was the main text, the “manifesto,” of the Chicago School. A lengthy scholarly book, it consisted of twenty articles by six members of the School-five pieces by Richard McKeon, five by Elder Olson, four by R. S. Crane, and two each by W. R. Keast, Norman Maclean, and Bernard Weinberg. Divided into three groups, the essays focused on, first, the limitations of contemporary criticism, primarily New Criticism; second, the pluralistic nature and continuing influence of past literary and critical theory, ranging from Aristotle to Samuel Johnson; and, third, the philosophical (or aesthetic) and methodological principles necessary for an adequate modern criticism and poetics. Because the collection opened with pointed critiques of I. A. Richards, William Empson, Cleanth Brooks, and other New Critics and because it then promoted a revised and expanded formalism, the Chicago School at its outset was presented as a reaction to New Criticism and as an alternative formalism. Beyond the University of Chicago, the School exerted comparatively little influence during the 1950s and 1960s. New Critical formalism gained sway across the nation. As editor of Critics and Criticism, R. S. Crane provided a programmatic

introduction to the School. From then on he was identified as the main spokesman for the Chicago Critics. Delivered as a course of lectures at the University of Toronto in the same year as the publication of the joint volume, Crane’s own The Languages of Criticism and the Structure of Poetry, published in 1953, developed in detail the basic concepts outlined in the introduction to the collective text. We learn from Crane that this group of critics had been working together at Chicago for two decades, having first come into contact during the mid-1930s to consider curriculum matters and educational reforms. A half century later the details of the early pedagogical projects of the School were sketched and corroborated by Richard McKeon in his brief memoir “Criticism and the Liberal Arts: The Chicago School of Criticism” (1982). Significantly, the collected essays of the School and Crane’s own book, though published in the early 1950s, represented work initiated in the 1930s

and 1940s (roughly contemporary with American New Criticism) and work undertaken in a context of pedagogical reform. During the 1930s the humanistic disciplines were fast losing influence to the

sciences and social sciences. Something had to be done. At the University of Chicago, as elsewhere, programs of renewal were being considered. What was undertaken initially was extensive reexamination of the assumptions and procedures of humanistic studies. In a state of disarray and inclined to imitate the sciences, the humanities increasingly lacked effectiveness and prestige. Ultimately, humanistic studies at Chicago were coordinated and a comprehensive curriculum was devised for undergraduate students. Under a new plan, four cooperating areas of humanistic education were conceived, including (1) Linguistics (very broadly construed); (2) Analysis of Ideas and Methods; (3) Comparative Examination of Art and Literature; and (4) Study of the History of Culture. Scholars from thirteen departments designed and staffed these interdisciplinary concentrations. Among the intellectuals recasting the curriculum and teaching in the various areas were the six Chicago Critics represented in Critics and Criticism. Richard McKeon, for example, originally a member of the Department of Greek and later a member of the Department of Philosophy, worked in the Program on Ideas and Methods as well as in the Program on History of Culture. Crane and McKeon collaborated for several years in teaching a course on the history of literary criticism. Numerous such linkages existed among the other members of this group. Thus the context for the formation of the Chicago School was a crisis in the status and function of the humanistic disciplines and a set of programs to reform and revitalize humanistic education. “The ‘Chicago School of criticism,’” observed McKeon decades later, “began and developed in the context of such changes in the programs of the college and the division of humanities.”1