By the early 1940s, the New Critics had established their critical positions within the academy, and in the period which followed, they revised and extended these positions in response to social and cultural developments. During this period, the work of Ransom, Tate and Warren began to diverge as they developed different potentials within their criticism. They continued to have much in common and remained friends, but their interests and their activities took different directions. In Ransom's case, he began to combat the politicization of artistic and critical activities during the war years, and he came to regard the restoration of the traditional society as an impossibility. As a result, while he continued to develop his defence of aesthetic activity in opposition to scientific positivism, he also began to isolate the literary text from other social activities and so limited its critical aspects. He came to accept the very position which he had formerly criticized; that literature was merely a refuge from, or compensation for, the alienated activities of modern society. During this same period, Tate did not dramatically alter his position, but he did become involved in the forms of anti-communism prevalent among intellectuals in the 1950s. This involvement was a part of his attack on the totalitarianism of modern society, but his association with organizations such as the Congress of Cultural Freedom forced him to flatter modern American society in opposition to communist societies. He was forced to play down both his objection to modern America and his previous insistence that it was as much an example of totalitarianism as other countries.

In contrast, it was Warren who made the most interesting contribution in the post-war period.