Robert Penn Warren, Shadowy Autobiography, and Other Makers of American Literature

"Drawing principally on the work of critic James Olney, Joseph R. Millichap shows how Robert Penn Warren's critical engagement with major American authors-Faulkner, Ransom, Melville, Whittier, Dreiser, and Hawthorne-generated both insightful criticism as well as a working out of Warren's own autobiography under the shadowy influence of these leading writers. While Warren himself occasionally acknowledged the autobiographical nature of creative work-especially in his poetry-Millichap discovers similar dynamics at work when Warren takes up influential writers in his criticism"--