Abstract

This article explores the concept of the network as it appears in the early writing of the literary scholar Hugh Kenner. Anticipating the widespread use of network in the humanities today, Kenner adapts the term from Marshall McLuhan and uses it throughout the 1950s and ’60s to think about intellectual networks, little magazines, and academic communication. The network concept is also considered in light of Kenner’s political conservatism and his participation in the midcentury movement of conservatism.