Wilson's literary criticism, almost from the beginning, has been marked by a double attention to art (the techniques of the artist, the narrower implications of the material) and to ideas (the moral, economic, social aspects of the work and of the environment in which it was brought forth); and that double attention has not often been encountered in American criticism with the particular emphasis that he has put upon it or with the approach that he has used. While in a sense any literary critic of depth has had to deal with the world of "ideas," with history or philosophy or economics, there have been few that have clung persistently to a progressive or radical orientation who have not fallen by the wayside or else been at one time or another sidetracked into a single and exclusive attention to "art" or to "ideas." (p. 356)

Only Wilson and a...