Forms of opposition in American literary criticism

Starting from Matthew Arnold’s “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time” (1865), this essay traces the importance of reading US literature and culture in comparative terms. Paying special attention to the work of Stuart Hall, Annette Kolodny, and F. O. Matthiessen, it argues that forms of structural opposition should be seen as embedded within American literature. Rather than understanding the subject itself in merely oppositional terms, it advocates antipodal and planetary critical perspectives that serve effectively to reposition the field within a wider context, one framed in various ways by biogenetic and environmental issues that exceed national boundaries. It concludes that while there are acute dangers for political leaders in a narrowness of vision, the same thing is true for literary criticism, where an undue narrowness of scope can be intellectually debilitating.