Word: matthiessen
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...faculty and the administration are interested in maintaining History and Lit as more than an amorphous sidelight for several departments, some system of permanent appointments would seem to be in order. Since F. O. Matthiessen's death in 1950, there has been no Professor of History and Literature, and senior professors concerned with the field--like Perry Miller--are too pressed by departmental commitments to pay more than nominal attention to History...
History and Lit was now thought of as a field for an elite--a reputation that many concentrators and tutors have since tried to live down--but more important was the esprit de corps of the tutorial staff. It was a small, brilliant group, led by Matthiessen and Perry Miller; there was a feeling that they were doing something unique and important in the Harvard curriculum. There were disagreements, to be sure--some tutorial meetings ended in fistfights--but enough agreement existed on central principles and objectives to make History and Lit a great, cohesive field...
...there were dissidents even in the 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...
...extraordinary tutorial group of the Thirties did not stick together long. Only two--Matthiessen and Miller--were promoted by Harvard, and the rest drifted away to other schools. The "synthesis" became more and more difficult, and some even questioned its value. Now it is mentioned more as an idealistic goal than as something normally and readily achieved...
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...