Marxism and Literary Criticism

This article provides a literary biography and intellectual recovery of Edwin Berry Burgum, a prominent Marxist critic whose career was derailed by his 1953 dismissal from New York University during the height of McCarthyism. It explores Burgum’s unique transition from a traditional Victorian scholar to a radical theorist who synthesized New Criticism’s formalist techniques with historical materialism and psychoanalytic principles. The essay centers on his landmark 1947 study, The Novel and the World’s Dilemma, which utilized the concept of “public truths” to analyze the relationship between social crisis and literary form. Burgum’s work is presented as a sophisticated alternative to formulaic Marxist dogma, particularly in his diagnosis of “personality disintegration” within European Modernism compared to the “integration” found in proletarian-aligned fiction. The article highlights his groundbreaking analysis of Richard Wright, in which he anticipated contemporary frameworks of racial capitalism and white racial positionality. By examining Burgum's cumulative reading method and his attention to the material conditions of literary production, this study recovers a nuanced critical practice that remains relevant to contemporary cultural studies and critical whiteness studies

Berry · Literary criticism · Cultural Studies and Interdisciplinary Research · Marxism and Critical Theory · Political Economy and Marxism

• Marxist Literary Criticism Today

  Barbara Foley•Marxist Literary Criticism Today•2019

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• Radical Representations

  Open Access•Barbara Foley•Radical Representations•1993

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• Interpretations of Balzac

  Open Access•Edwin Berry Burgum•Science & Society•1937

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• The therapeutic implications of supervision

  Mildred Burgum, Helen E Durkin et al.•American Journal of Orthopsychiatry•1959

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