The Chicago School

This chapter starts with the disparity because it provides the ground for the twin goals: to offer a succinct and coherent account of the work of that first generation and to revise the standard narrative about their importance and influence. The revised narrative counters that the first generation's failure to dislodge the New Criticism has obscured the success of the Chicago School over the long term. The chapter begins with the metacritical dimension because it helps contextualize the interpretive one. School project, that the chapter considers how well the Chicago Critics claims for superiority to the New Critics. The first generation's interpretive project, with its emphasis on the multiple causes of the artistic whole, its understanding of language as the means rather than the end of that construction. It is too early to tell how much influence the fourth generation will have or just how they will further revise and expand the work of the Chicago School.