Limits of the Biographical Approach

Abstract

N A provocative essay published recently in the Sewanee Review, Leslie A. Fiedler1 takes strong exception to what he labels central of much recent criticism. The dogma is antibiographism, which asserts that information is irrelevant to the understanding and evaluation of poems and that, conversely, poems cannot be legitimately used as material biography.2 According to Fiedler, this view is open to attack on various grounds: (1) it is obsolete, since it takes no account of the recent findings of depth psychology; (2) it is philosophically erroneous, since it hinges on too narrow a notion of the work of art. To top it all, the antibiographical position has ceased to be either amusing or novel. It may have been useful, concedes Mr. Fiedler, as a protest against the romantic's excessive concern with the personal or against the scientific scholar's hunt biographical minutiae. But for a long time now it has been threatening to turn into one of these annoying cliches of the intellectually middle-aged, proffered with an air of a stimulating heresy.3 Apart from its loaded phraseology, this latter observation is a shrewd reminder that some of our critical emphases are suffering from a time lag. One can readily agree with Mr. Fiedler that nowadays the debunking of the genetic fallacy is not necessarily a sign of intellectual boldness. Times do change. The New Criticism is not so new any more. Yesterday's heresy has well-nigh become today's orthodoxy, as some of its most vocal spokesmen have moved into commanding positions in American literary scholarship. Thus, inveighing against biographism may indeed seem to be a case of flogging a dead horse. But one wonders at times whether the horse is not merely playing dead. Not too long ago Harold Cherniss called attention to the fact that the recently discovered record of sale of a house belonging to John Milton had been hailed by many English scholars as an important addition to Milton research.4 This is perhaps, too, a matter of a slight time lag. Some unreconstructed literary antiquarians have not yet caught up with the more advanced practitioners and theorists of lit-