ABSTRACT: Allen Tate’s identification with both the Agrarians and the New Critics has led theorists of the last half century to dismiss his criticism as outmoded. This essay reexamines his controversial call for “violence” in I’ll Take My Stand , arguing that the term was metaphorical and rooted in his evolving literary philosophy. Tate’s development in his later essays, particularly “The Symbolic Imagination,” reveals a progression toward a phenomenological hermeneutics akin to that of Husserl, Gadamer, and Ricoeur. The essay contends that his work anticipated contemporary literary theory’s concerns with interpretation and subjectivity, ultimately proposing that Tate’s later criticism deserves reconsideration as a precursor to modern hermeneutic and phenomenological approaches.
Robert A. Vaughan (Thu,) studied this question.