Tigerstedt was known among his colleagues and students for his vivid lectures, their historical outlook, and his language skills, but he was fairly dismissive of the new ideas that came to influence literary theory in the 1940s (for example, the so-called 'New Criticism' and psychoanalytic methods).
Tigerstedt var känd bland sina kolleger och studenter för sin rika lärdom, sin historiska utblick och sina språkkunskaper, men han var relativt avvisande till de nya idéer som kom att färga litteraturteorin fr.o.m. 1940-talet (t.ex. nykritik och psykoanalytiskt influerade metoder).