F. O. Matthiessen
Encyclopedia
Francis Otto Matthiessen (February 19, 1902 - April 1, 1950) was an educator, scholar and literary critic influential in the fields of American literature
and American studies
.
, and chaired its undergraduate program in history and literature. He wrote and edited landmark works of scholarship on T. S. Eliot
, Ralph Waldo Emerson
, the James family (Alice James
, Henry James
, Henry James Sr.
, and William James
), Sarah Orne Jewett
, Sinclair Lewis
, Herman Melville
, Henry David Thoreau
, and Walt Whitman
.
Matthiessen's best-known book, American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman (1941), discusses the flowering of literary culture in the middle of the American 19th century, with Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, Whitman and Nathaniel Hawthorne
. Its focus was the period roughly from 1850 to 1855 in which all these writers but Emerson published what would, by Matthiessen's time, come to be thought of as their masterpieces: Melville's Moby-Dick
, multiple editions of Whitman's Leaves of Grass
, Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter
and The House of the Seven Gables
, and Thoreau's Walden
. The mid-19th century in American literature is commonly called the American Renaissance
because of the influence of this work on later literary history and criticism. In 2009 The New York Times
said that the book "virtually created the field of American literature."
, where he was a student at Polytechnic School
. Following the separation of his parents, he relocated with his mother to his paternal grandparents home in La Salle, Illinois. He completed his secondary education at Hackley School
, in Tarrytown, New York. In 1923 he graduated from Yale University
, where he was a member of Skull and Bones
. He studied at Oxford University, as a Rhodes Scholar earning a B.Litt. in 1925. At Harvard University, he quickly completed his M.A. in 1926 and Ph.D. degree in 1927. Matthiessen then returned to Yale to teach for two years, before beginning a distinguished teaching career at Harvard.
Matthiessen, as a gay man in the 1930s and 1940s, chose to remain in the closet
throughout his professional career, if not in his personal life – although traces of homoerotic concern are apparent in his writings. In 2009, a statement from Harvard University said that Matthiessen "stands out as an unusual example of a gay man who lived his sexuality as an 'open secret' in the mid-20th century."
Matthiessen had a 20-year romantic relationship with the painter Russell Cheney
. The couple shared a cottage in Kittery, Maine
for decades. In planning to spend his life with Cheney, Matthiessen went as far as asking his cohort in the Yale secret society Skull and Bones to approve of their partnership (Levin 43-44). With Cheney having encouraged Matthiessen's interest in Whitman, it has been argued that American Renaissance was "the ultimate expression of Matthiessen's love for Cheney and a secret celebration of the gay artist."
He was hospitalized once for a nervous breakdown in 1938-1939. After Cheney's death, Matthiessen was increasingly distraught; he committed suicide by jumping from a window in 1950. Inquiries by HUAC into his politics may also have been a factor in his suicide: writing in 1958, Eric Jacobsen referred to Matthiessen's death as "hastened by forces whose activities earned for themselves the sobriquet un-American which they sought so assiduously to fasten on others". In 1978, however, Harry Levin
was more skeptical, saying only that "spokesmen for the Communist Party
, to which he had never belonged, loudly signalized his suicide as a political gesture".
Matthiessen was buried at Springfield Cemetery in Springfield, Massachusetts
.
. Matthiessen, who was already financially secure, donated an inheritance he received in the late 1940s to his friend, Marxist economist Paul Sweezy
; Sweezy used the money, totalling almost $15,000, to found a new journal, which became the Monthly Review
. F. O. Matthiessen was mentioned as an activist in Boston area so-called "Communist front groups" by Herbert Philbrick
.
called the F. O. Matthiessen Visiting Professorship of Gender and Sexuality. Believing the post to be "the first professorship of its kind in the country," Harvard President Drew G. Faust called it “an important milestone.” It is funded by a $1.5 million gift from the members and supporters of the Harvard Gay & Lesbian Caucus
.
American literature
American literature is the written or literary work produced in the area of the United States and its preceding colonies. For more specific discussions of poetry and theater, see Poetry of the United States and Theater in the United States. During its early history, America was a series of British...
and American studies
American studies
American studies or American civilization is an interdisciplinary field dealing with the study of the United States. It traditionally incorporates the study of history, literature, and critical theory, but also includes fields as diverse as law, art, the media, film, religious studies, urban...
.
Scholarly work
Matthiessen was an American studies scholar and literary critic at Harvard UniversityHarvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, and chaired its undergraduate program in history and literature. He wrote and edited landmark works of scholarship on T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...
, the James family (Alice James
Alice James
Alice James was a U.S. diarist. The only daughter of Henry James, Sr. and sister of philosopher William James and novelist Henry James, she is known mainly for the posthumously published diary that she kept in her final years.-Life:Born into a wealthy and intellectually active family, Alice James...
, Henry James
Henry James
Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....
, Henry James Sr.
Henry James Sr.
Henry James Sr. was an American theologian and Swedenborgian, best known as the father of the philosopher William James, novelist Henry James, and diarist Alice James.-Forebears:...
, and William James
William James
William James was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher who was trained as a physician. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and on the philosophy of pragmatism...
), Sarah Orne Jewett
Sarah Orne Jewett
Sarah Orne Jewett was an American novelist and short story writer, best known for her local color works set in or near South Berwick, Maine, on the border of New Hampshire, which in her day was a declining New England seaport.-Biography:Jewett's family had been residents of New England for many...
, Sinclair Lewis
Sinclair Lewis
Harry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of...
, Herman Melville
Herman Melville
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd....
, Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...
, and Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman
Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...
.
Matthiessen's best-known book, American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman (1941), discusses the flowering of literary culture in the middle of the American 19th century, with Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, Whitman and Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer.Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in the city of Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, a judge during the Salem Witch Trials...
. Its focus was the period roughly from 1850 to 1855 in which all these writers but Emerson published what would, by Matthiessen's time, come to be thought of as their masterpieces: Melville's Moby-Dick
Moby-Dick
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, was written by American author Herman Melville and first published in 1851. It is considered by some to be a Great American Novel and a treasure of world literature. The story tells the adventures of wandering sailor Ishmael, and his voyage on the whaleship Pequod,...
, multiple editions of Whitman's Leaves of Grass
Leaves of Grass
Leaves of Grass is a poetry collection by the American poet Walt Whitman . Though the first edition was published in 1855, Whitman spent his entire life writing Leaves of Grass, revising it in several editions until his death...
, Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter
The Scarlet Letter
The Scarlet Letter is an 1850 romantic work of fiction in a historical setting, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It is considered to be his magnum opus. Set in 17th-century Puritan Boston during the years 1642 to 1649, it tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter through an...
and The House of the Seven Gables
The House of the Seven Gables
The House of the Seven Gables is a 1668 colonial mansion in Salem, Massachusetts, USA. The house is now a non-profit museum, with an admission fee charged for tours, as well as an active settlement house with programs for children...
, and Thoreau's Walden
Walden
Walden is an American book written by noted Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau...
. The mid-19th century in American literature is commonly called the American Renaissance
American Renaissance (literature)
In American literature, the American Renaissance was a period during which many of the literary works most widely considered American masterpieces were produced. The period is generally defined as the mid-19th century but especially the years roughly from 1850 to 1855...
because of the influence of this work on later literary history and criticism. In 2009 The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
said that the book "virtually created the field of American literature."
Personal life
Matthiessen was born in Pasadena, CaliforniaPasadena, California
Pasadena is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Although famous for hosting the annual Rose Bowl football game and Tournament of Roses Parade, Pasadena is the home to many scientific and cultural institutions, including the California Institute of Technology , the Jet...
, where he was a student at Polytechnic School
Polytechnic School
Polytechnic School, often referred to as simply Poly, is a college preparatory private school in Pasadena, California.-History:The school was founded in 1907 as the first private non-sectarian, non-profit elementary school in California. It descends from the Throop Polytechnic Institute founded by...
. Following the separation of his parents, he relocated with his mother to his paternal grandparents home in La Salle, Illinois. He completed his secondary education at Hackley School
Hackley School
Hackley School is a private college preparatory school located in Tarrytown, New York and is a member of the Ivy Preparatory School League. Founded in 1899 by wealthy philanthropist Mrs. Caleb Brewster Hackley, Hackley was intended to be a Unitarian alternative to the mostly Episcopal boarding...
, in Tarrytown, New York. In 1923 he graduated from Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, where he was a member of Skull and Bones
Skull and Bones
Skull and Bones is an undergraduate senior or secret society at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. It is a traditional peer society to Scroll and Key and Wolf's Head, as the three senior class 'landed societies' at Yale....
. He studied at Oxford University, as a Rhodes Scholar earning a B.Litt. in 1925. At Harvard University, he quickly completed his M.A. in 1926 and Ph.D. degree in 1927. Matthiessen then returned to Yale to teach for two years, before beginning a distinguished teaching career at Harvard.
Matthiessen, as a gay man in the 1930s and 1940s, chose to remain in the closet
The Closet
The Closet may refer to:* The Closet , Chinese film* The Closet , French film* The closet, referring to undisclosed homosexuality- See also :* Closet* Closet * In the closet...
throughout his professional career, if not in his personal life – although traces of homoerotic concern are apparent in his writings. In 2009, a statement from Harvard University said that Matthiessen "stands out as an unusual example of a gay man who lived his sexuality as an 'open secret' in the mid-20th century."
Matthiessen had a 20-year romantic relationship with the painter Russell Cheney
Russell Cheney
Russell Cheney was an American painter. He graduated from Yale in 1904, where he was a member of the Skull and Bones secret society....
. The couple shared a cottage in Kittery, Maine
Kittery, Maine
Kittery is a town in York County, Maine, United States. The population was 9,543 at the 2000 census. Home to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard on Seavey's Island, Kittery includes Badger's Island, the seaside district of Kittery Point, and part of the Isles of Shoals...
for decades. In planning to spend his life with Cheney, Matthiessen went as far as asking his cohort in the Yale secret society Skull and Bones to approve of their partnership (Levin 43-44). With Cheney having encouraged Matthiessen's interest in Whitman, it has been argued that American Renaissance was "the ultimate expression of Matthiessen's love for Cheney and a secret celebration of the gay artist."
He was hospitalized once for a nervous breakdown in 1938-1939. After Cheney's death, Matthiessen was increasingly distraught; he committed suicide by jumping from a window in 1950. Inquiries by HUAC into his politics may also have been a factor in his suicide: writing in 1958, Eric Jacobsen referred to Matthiessen's death as "hastened by forces whose activities earned for themselves the sobriquet un-American which they sought so assiduously to fasten on others". In 1978, however, Harry Levin
Harry Levin
Harry Tuchman Levin was an American literary critic and scholar of modernism and comparative literature.-Biography:...
was more skeptical, saying only that "spokesmen for the Communist Party
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
, to which he had never belonged, loudly signalized his suicide as a political gesture".
Matthiessen was buried at Springfield Cemetery in Springfield, Massachusetts
Springfield, Massachusetts
Springfield is the most populous city in Western New England, and the seat of Hampden County, Massachusetts, United States. Springfield sits on the eastern bank of the Connecticut River near its confluence with three rivers; the western Westfield River, the eastern Chicopee River, and the eastern...
.
Politics
Matthiessen's politics were left-wing, socialist, though not dogmatically Marxist, as he felt his Christianity was incompatible with Marxist atheismAtheism
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...
. Matthiessen, who was already financially secure, donated an inheritance he received in the late 1940s to his friend, Marxist economist Paul Sweezy
Paul Sweezy
Paul Marlor Sweezy was a Marxist economist, political activist, publisher, and founding editor of the long-running magazine Monthly Review...
; Sweezy used the money, totalling almost $15,000, to found a new journal, which became the Monthly Review
Monthly Review
Monthly Review is an independent Marxist journal published 11 times per year in New York City.-History:The publication was founded by Harvard University economics instructor Paul Sweezy, who became the first editor...
. F. O. Matthiessen was mentioned as an activist in Boston area so-called "Communist front groups" by Herbert Philbrick
Herbert Philbrick
Herbert Arthur Philbrick was a Boston area advertising executive who was paid by the FBI to infiltrate the Communist Party USA between 1940 and 1949. His involvement began when he joined a Communist front group in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Cambridge Youth Council...
.
Legacy
Matthiessen's contribution to the critical celebration of 19th century American literature is considered formative and enduring. Along with several other scholars, he is regarded as a contributor to the creation of American studies as a recognized academic discipline. In 2009 Harvard established an endowed chair in LGBT studiesQueer studies
Queer studies is the critical theory based study of issues relating to sexual orientation and gender identity usually focusing on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people and cultures. Universities have also labeled this area of analysis Sexual Diversity Studies, Sexualities...
called the F. O. Matthiessen Visiting Professorship of Gender and Sexuality. Believing the post to be "the first professorship of its kind in the country," Harvard President Drew G. Faust called it “an important milestone.” It is funded by a $1.5 million gift from the members and supporters of the Harvard Gay & Lesbian Caucus
Harvard Gay & Lesbian Caucus
The Harvard Gay and Lesbian Caucus is an American non-profit organization of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Harvard University and Radcliffe College alumni/ae, faculty, staff and students...
.