James Everett Seaton was an American writer, professor and literary critic. He argued for the continued relevance and importance of the tradition of literary humanism championed by Matthew Arnold and later, Irving Babbitt and Paul Elmer Moore. At the same time he opposed many of the dominant trends in Academia regarding literary criticism and the teaching of literature, such as the Cultural Studies model instituted by Herbert Marcuse and the general emphasis away from the study of literary works themselves in favor of a focus on critical theory.
Among Seaton's central contentions were that literary criticism and instruction should prioritize literature over theory, a position he had opportunity to express during C-Span's Teaching Literature conference marking the 10th anniversary of Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, held at the University of Chicago. In his closing statements of that address, Dr. Seaton predicted that the Humanistic Tradition would survive so long as "novels, plays, poems and even intellectual biographies such as The Closing of the American Mind continue to exert their hold on us, through the postmodern era and beyond" because "its only necessary ground is the authority and significance of literature." In his 2014 book, Literary Criticism from Plato to Postmodernism: The Humanistic Alternative, he presented the notion that the history of literary criticism could be broadly conceived of as a conversation between three distinct but at times overlapping traditions, the Platonic tradition which judged literature by the extent to which it conveyed the proper political messages, the Neoplatonic which romanticized literature as a gateway to transcendent knowledge and the Humanistic tradition, which valued literature for its potential to offer insight into the human experience. In his favorable review of the book for the Wall Street Journal, Barton Swaim referred to the book as an "eloquent complaint."
by George Santayana. Edited and with an introduction by James Seaton, with essays by James Seaton, Wilfred McClay, John Lachs, and Roger Kimball. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2009.
Edited by William K. Buckley and James Seaton. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green SU Popular Press, 1992.
A Reading of Vergil's Georgics. Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1983.
Seaton's contributions to books
Introduction to Santayana Edition volume of Three Philosophical Poets from MIT Press, 2019
“George Santayana as a Cultural Critic.” . Ed. Matthew Caleb Flamm and Krzysztof Piotr Skowroňski. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007. 111-20.
“Affirming the Principle.” . Ed. Lucas E. Morel. Lexington, Kentucky: UP of Kentucky, 2004. 22-36.
“Henry James's The Princess Casamassima: Revolution and the Preservation of Culture.” . ed. Henry T. Edmondson III. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2000. 15-25.
"The Beauty of Middle‑Class Virtue: Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! . ed. Henry T. Edmondson III. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2000. 193-202.
"The Humanities and Cultural Criticism: The Example of Ralph Ellison." . Ed. Ray Browne and Marshall Fishwick. Bowling Green: Bowling Green SU popular P, 1992. 101-108.
"Innocence Regained; the Career of Leslie Fiedler." Ed. Adam J. Sorkin. Bowling Green: Bowling Green SU Popular P, 1989. 93-110.
