The Yale New Critic (The Well Wrought Urn, Understanding Poetry), placed by Cameron and Bob in the line of close readers around McLuhan — the milieu of Leavis, Richards, and Empson whose method shaped McLuhan's own. He enters as the professor Don Theall "went to" at Yale , where Kenner also studied, and returns as a possible influence on McLuhan's reading of Poe and as the American who "took the South seriously" . New to it — start with dialogue 03 for the Yale connection.
Across the dialogues
Enters as the Yale New Critic Don Theall goes to study under — the connection that also puts McLuhan in reach of Pound
Cameron makes Brooks the destination of Theall's choice — after going "back and forth with McLuhan" about where to do his PhD, Theall lands with Brooks at Yale, the institutional link that Bob notes also brought McLuhan into contact with Pound.
"And the outcome of that is him going to Brooks at Yale."
Reframed as a possible influence on McLuhan's Poe, and as the American who took Southern literature seriously
Cameron proposes Brooks as a double influence — not only a New Critic but a scholar of Southern and American letters, the combination Cameron floats as shaping McLuhan's early turn to Poe.
"Cleanth Brooks was influential in this because Brooks was an expert in the new criticism, but he was also an expert in Southern culture and American literature."
Bob's narrower placement — Brooks as perhaps the first American to take Southern literature (and Poe) seriously as a subject, "their revolution," against a French critical tradition that got there by another route.
"And so Cleanth Brooks might have been the first American to take the South."
Connections
Theall did his PhD at Yale with Brooks (and Wimsatt); the outcome of his back-and-forth with McLuhan about where to study.
Kenner also did his Yale PhD under Brooks — part of the New Critical line that read McLuhan's own dissertation.