Word: browere
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...Thirties, and the personalities of Matthiessen ("History and Literature incarnate," according to Prof. Robert Wolff, a concentrator of the period) and of the rest of the tutors were the main cohesive force. "It was, more than anything, a meeting of a few minds," says Professor Reuben A. Brower, "and who knows how something like that happens...
...Brower, probably the chief spokesman at Harvard for the so-called "New Criticism" seconds Bate's point and adds that in general the adherents of a non-historical approach are "on the defensive" in the Harvard English department. Brower regards his approach to literature--"to have as full an experience as possible without thinking of time and place"--as one step away from History and Lit in order to move two steps closer...
...student should know how to read literature (and, incidentally, historical sources) before he can begin to synthesize. The problem is whether both goals--reading and synthesis--can be accomplished within a three-year period of undergraduate concentration. The departure from an historical approach, Brower feels, has been much exaggerated...
...Gilmore, Brower and Perry Miller feel that another important reason for History and Lit's present difficulties lies back in the Thirties themselves. The brilliant tutorial group of that period broke up rapidly because only Matthiessen and Miller were given tenure by the University; of these two, Matthiessen was a Professor of History and Literature, but Miller went into the English department and is now able to give very little time to History and Lit, his "first love." Work by senior faculty members in History and Lit is, incidently, unpaid ("purely a labor of love," says Professor Bate...
...senior professors, no matter how sincere their interest and concern for History and Lit, have too many departmental demands on their time to take even one or two tutees in the field. If History and Lit is to survive as a genuine synthetic disciplne, it must, Gilmore and Brower feel, have a system of permanent appointments...