Dictionary of Literary Biography: Modern American Critics 1920-55

The end of World War I, a time of acute social upheaval in America, marked the rise of modern criticism. What began as a largely independent enterprise became a discipline chiefly housed in college and university literature departments. 'The modernist revolt against the major forms of 19th-century criticism...' writes editor Gregory S. Jay in this DLB volume's foreword '...informs the work of diverse critics in this period.' That diversity is reflected in the profiles found in DLB Volume 63 when, Jay notes, critics and scholars "rediscovered in American literature a powerful cultural tradition that speaks to the issues of the present age." 27 entries include: Irving Babbitt, R.P. Blackmur, Cleanth Brooks, Sterling A. Brown, T.S. Eliot, H.L. Mencken, Ezra Pound, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Lionel Trilling, Edmund Wilson.