SOURCE: “F. O. Matthiessen, Christian Socialist: Literature and the Repossession of Our Cultural Past,” in The Rediscovery of American Literature, Harvard University Press, 1967, pp. 209-73.

In the following essay, Ruland analyzes the defining characteristics of Matthiessen's critical work, and evaluates his impact on American literary theory and criticism.

The whole book is based on the proposition that what a writer believes about man, about society, and about the universe has a great deal to do with what he writes. …

—Granville Hicks on American Renaissance (1941)

If we are to have adequate cultural history, we must begin by respecting the texts themselves.

—F. O. Matthiessen, The Responsibilities of the Critic (1952)

As a method, the close attention to the text insisted upon by New Criticism has had far-reaching beneficial effects. But as the sole concern of its more ordinary adherents, it has proven stultifying. The divorce of art from its cultural...