How did Edmund Wilson and Kenneth Burke use historical approaches to literature?

Edmund Wilson and Kenneth Burke were prominent 20th-century critics who utilized historical and socio-literary approaches, partly influenced by Marxism, to move beyond the formalist analysis of texts.1

Edmund Wilson
Wilson rejected the narrow focus of the New Critics, arguing that literature should be examined by placing it at the center of intersecting contexts, including biographical, political, social, and philosophical frameworks. His historical approach was expansive; for example, To the Finland Station (1940) analyzed the historical thinkers behind the Russian Revolution, while Patriotic Gore (1962) provided a deep study of American Civil War literature. He viewed criticism as a way to probe subjects through scholarship and common sense, often connecting art to the broader human experience.2

Kenneth Burke
Burke advocated for a holistic view that incorporated both "intrinsic" elements of a text and "extrinsic" factors, such as the author’s biography and the social, historical, and political background. He viewed literature as "symbolic action," where language functions as a mode of human agency. His work, such as Attitudes Toward History, reflected his complex, rhetorically based analysis of how literature interacts with its full cultural context.34