SOURCE: “F. O. Matthiessen and American Studies: Authorizing a Renaissance,” in Critical Genealogies: Historical Situations for Postmodern Literary Studies, Columbia University Press, 1987, pp. 157-75.

In the following essay, Arac addresses the often contradictory nature of Matthiessen's work and assesses “the possibilities for a new literary history in the practice of American Renaissance.”

For decades since his suicide in 1950, F. O. Matthiessen has exerted a compelling attraction. The documentation, analysis, and controversy around him bulk larger than for any other American literary scholar born in the twentieth century, and they grow.

There are at least three good reasons for this posthumous attention. First, Matthiessen played a decisive role in making possible the American academic study of American literature (for short, “American studies”). His major book, American Renaissance (1941), has given its name to courses taught at hundreds of institutions. More than any other single factor it enabled hundreds of Ph...