by the idea of a national literary history has been to regard literary texts, in the manner of V. L. Parrington, as more or less encoded reflections of American history- whether political, cultural, religious or intellectual. There are, to be sure, those who believe that literature of any country has value in the context of non-literary history. "If literary studies are divorced from the larger concerns of cultural history," D. W. Robertson has said, "they will eventually wither away." In the study of American literature, however, where nationality, as Wellek noted, is not linguistically definite, non-literary history has been seen as especially crucial to literary history. Any survey of American literature, Fred Lewis Pattee said, "must be written against the background of American history" if it is even to seem American. A working knowledge of "social, economic, and political history," Norman Foerster maintained, "is peculiarly important in the case of American literature." Harry Hayden Clark agreed that the American literary historian "must keep abreast of his brother students in history and economics." And Louis B. Wright put the case most strenuously of all: "American literature is a part of the infinite complex of American cultural development and must be treated in relation to the rest of cultural phenomena if it is to have any real significance as history."
The main objection to this approach is that, even though the historical decoding of texts may require considerable skill in literary analysis, the treatment is finally unliterary insofar as it locates the ultimate value of literature outside itself, in the so-called "Real" world of ideas and events that literature is supposed to reflect. Modifying his earlier position somewhat, Foerster objected to the normal procedures of American literary history on the ground that they lead scholars "to view literature as a supplement to history." In doing so, furthermore, they ascribe the