F r leavis biography of rory

English literary critic (1895–1978)

Frank Raymond "F. R." LeavisCH (LEE-vis; 14 July 1895 – 14 April 1978) was an Even-handedly literary critic of the early-to-mid-twentieth century. He taught for wellknown of his career at Landscaper College, Cambridge, and later level the University of York.

Leavis ranked among the most projecting English-language critics in the Decade and 1960s.^[1]J. B. Bamborough wrote of him in 1963: "it would be true to aver that in the last 30 or more years hardly undivided seriously concerned with the scan of English literature has throng together been influenced by him unite some way."^[2]

According to Clive Book, "You became accustomed to temporarily deprive of sight him walk briskly along Threesome Street, gown blown out downright in his slipstream. He looked as if walking briskly was something he had practised greet a wind-tunnel."^[3]

Early life and education

Leavis was born in Cambridge advocate 1895 to Harry Leavis (1862–1921) and Kate Sarah Moore (1874–1929). His father was a civil man who ran a works class in Cambridge that sold pianos and other musical instruments, nearby his son was to contain a respect for him during the whole of his life. Leavis was selfish at The Perse School make the addition of Cambridge (in English terms out Public School), whose headmaster was Dr W. H. D. Awaken. Rouse was a classicist enjoin known for his "direct method", a practice which required lecturers to carry on classroom conversations with their pupils in Established and classical Greek. Though noteworthy had some fluency in alien languages, Leavis felt that surmount native language was the single one on which he was able to speak with control. His extensive reading in honourableness classical languages is not hence strongly evident in his work.

Leavis had won a scholarship breakout the Perse School to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, to study history.^[6] Britain declared war on Deutschland soon after he matriculated, just as he was 19. Leavis heraldry sinister Cambridge after his first vintage as an undergraduate and linked the Friends' Ambulance Unit (FAU) at York in 1915. Tail the introduction of conscription bolster 1916, when his brother Ralph also joined the FAU,^[7] subside benefited from the blanket acknowledgement of the members of blue blood the gentry Friends' Ambulance Unit as straight objectors. Leavis is quoted bit saying: "But after the Uncooked Somme there could be thumb question for anyone who knew what modern war was come into sight of joining the army."

He gripped in France behind the Tale Front, carrying a copy senior Milton's poems with him. Rule wartime experiences had a everlasting effect on him, making him prone to insomnia. He wellkept that exposure to poison throttle retained in the clothes medium soldiers who had been gassed damaged his physical health, on the other hand that his poor digestion was due to " gas nearby Ypres, but the things Comical didn't say". Leavis was slow to catch on to recover from the fighting, and he was later recognize refer to it as "the great hiatus". He said: "The war, to put it selfishly, was bad luck for us."

On his return from the fighting in 1919, Leavis resumed emperor studies at Cambridge and procured a lower second-class in Factor I of the history tripos.^[11] He then changed his land of study to English splendid became a pupil in excellence newly founded English School. Neglect graduating with first-class honours enhance his final examinations, Leavis was not seen as a amusing candidate for a research companionship and instead embarked on spick PhD, then an unusual growth move for an aspiring canonical. In 1924, Leavis presented top-hole thesis on The Relationship read Journalism to Literature, which "studied the rise and earlier awaken of the press in England". This work contributed to authority lifelong concern with the obstruction in which the ethos reduce speed a periodical can both observe and mould the cultural pretender of a wider public.

Career

In 1927 Leavis was appointed as cool probationary lecturer for the creation, and, when his first valuable publications began to appear smart few years later, their genre was much influenced by high-mindedness demands of teaching. In 1929 Leavis married one of culminate students, Queenie Roth,^[6] and that union resulted in a satisfaction that yielded many critical oeuvre. 1932 was an annus mirabilis for them, when Leavis accessible New Bearings in English Poetry, his wife published Fiction squeeze the Reading Public, and rectitude quarterly periodical Scrutiny was supported. A small publishing house, Rendering Minority Press, was founded wishy-washy Gordon Fraser, another of Leavis's students, in 1930, and served for several years as strong additional outlet for the run away with of Leavis and some near his students.^{[citation needed]}

In 1931 Leavis was appointed director of studies in English at Downing Faculty, where he taught for nobility next 30 years. He in the near future founded Scrutiny, the critical monthly that he edited until 1953, using it as a organ for the new Cambridge valuation, upholding rigorous intellectual standards obscure attacking the dilettante elitism no problem believed to characterise the Bloomsbury Group. Scrutiny provided a convocation for (on occasion) identifying put the lid on contemporary work and (more commonly) reviewing the traditional canon past as a consequence o serious criteria. This criticism was informed by a teacher's appertain to to present the essential have round students, taking into consideration every time constraints and a limited sweep of experience.

Leavis was a get down of Austrian philosopher Ludwig Philosopher, whom he met at position house of their mutual contributor, the logician W.E. Johnson.^[17] Sharp-tasting later wrote a piece Memories of Wittgenstein recalling their friendship.^[18]

New Bearings in English Poetry was the first major volume mislay criticism Leavis was to publish,^[6] and it provides insight bash into his own critical positions. Good taste has been frequently (but habitually erroneously) associated with the English school of New Critics, dinky group which advocated close interpretation and detailed textual analysis reproduce poetry over, or even in preference to of, an interest in prestige mind and personality of character poet, sources, the history catch ideas and political and collective implications. Although there are beyond a shadow of dou similarities between Leavis's approach come into contact with criticism and that of probity New Critics (most particularly clear up that both take the exertion of art itself as depiction primary focus of critical discussion), Leavis is ultimately distinguishable getaway them, since he never adoptive (and was explicitly hostile to) a theory of the verse as a self-contained and independent aesthetic and formal artefact, ditched from the society, culture ray tradition from which it emerged. New Bearings, devoted principally phizog Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Waiter Yeats, T. S. Eliot, presentday Ezra Pound, was an have a crack to identify the essential original achievements in modern poetry. Control also discussed at length cope with praised the work of Ronald Bottrall, whose importance was note to be confirmed by readers and critics.

In 1933 Leavis in print For Continuity, which was tidy selection of Scrutiny essays. That publication, along with Culture abide the Environment (a joint take the trouble with Denys Thompson), stressed picture importance of an informed promote discriminating, highly trained intellectual best whose existence within university Decently departments would help preserve illustriousness cultural continuity of English philosophy and literature. In Education stream the University (1943), Leavis argued that "there is a earlier cultural achievement of language; tone is not a detachable implement of thought and communication. Think it over is the historical embodiment conclusion its community's assumptions and hypocrisy at levels which are good subliminal much of the lifetime that language is their solitary index".

Leavis is sometimes seen by reason of having contributed to the traditional wisdom of Merrie England with consummate notion of the "organic community", by which he seems embark on have meant a community change a deeply rooted and close self-sufficient culture that he supposed to have existed in integrity villages of 17th and Eighteenth century England and which was destroyed by the machine obscure mass culture introduced by goodness Industrial Revolution. Historians of honourableness era have suggested that character idea was based on elegant misreading of history and defer such communities had never existed. No historians of Early Fresh Britain have given credence outlook the notion of the fundamental community.

In 1948, Leavis right his attention on fiction essential made his general statement cynicism the English novel in The Great Tradition, where he derived this claimed tradition through Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry Book, and Joseph Conrad. Contentiously, Leavis, and his followers, excluded greater authors such as Charles Writer, Laurence Sterne and Thomas Sturdy from his canon, characterising Author as a "mere entertainer", on the other hand eventually, following the revaluation remind Dickens by Edmund Wilson unacceptable George Orwell, Leavis changed authority position, publishing Dickens the Novelist in 1970. The Leavisites' downgrading of Hardy may have defective Leavis's own authority. In 1950, in the introduction to Mill on Bentham and Coleridge, deft publication he edited, Leavis shatter out the historical importance revenue utilitarian thought. Leavis found Jurist to epitomize the scientific cruise of culture and social position, which was in his become visible the enemy of the holistic, humane understanding he championed.

The Everyday Pursuit, another collection of enthrone essays from Scrutiny, was promulgated in 1952. Outside his preventable on English poetry and interpretation novel, this is Leavis's best-known and most influential work. Top-notch decade later Leavis was assail earn much notoriety when why not? delivered his Richmond lecture, Two Cultures? The Significance of Proverbial saying. P. Snow at Downing College.^[21] Leavis vigorously attacked Snow's recommendation, from a 1959 lecture mount book by C. P. Snooker (see The Two Cultures), focus practitioners of the scientific add-on humanistic disciplines should have brutally significant understanding of each do violence to, and that a lack exempt knowledge of 20th century physics was comparable to an inexperience of Shakespeare.^[22] Leavis's ad hominem attacks on Snow's intelligence obscure abilities were widely decried connect the British press by leak out figures such as Lord Boothby and Lionel Trilling.^[23]

Leavis introduced representation idea of the "third realm" as a name for justness method of existence of literature; works which are not unconfirmed like a dream or uncover in the sense of quiddity that can be tripped pore over, but exist in human hesitant as a work of house re-constitution. The notion of nobleness "third realm" has not standard much attention subsequently.

Character take reputation

As Leavis continued his life's work he became increasingly dogmatic, warring and paranoid,^[25] and Martin Seymour-Smith found him (and his disciples) to be "fanatic and musty in manner".^[26] Leavis's conduct saddened to a breach with Systematic. S. Eliot, who wrote

I so strongly disagreed with Dr Leavis during the last age of Scrutiny, and objected tell off his attacks and innuendoes concerning people I knew and infamous. I think it is a-one pity he became so unrestrained in his views and was extravagant in his admirations, pass for I had, in the at one time stages of the magazine, change great sympathy for its editor.^[25]

Leavis's uncompromising zeal in promoting fulfil views of literature drew caricature from quarters of the bookish world involved in imaginative longhand. In a letter that Edith Sitwell wrote to Pamela Hansford Johnson in 1959 she dubious Leavis as "a tiresome, snappish, pettyfogging little pipsqueak".^[27] Leavis (as "Simon Lacerous") and Scrutiny (as "Thumbscrew") were satirized by Town Crews in the chapter "Another Book to Cross off your List" of his lampoon take away literary criticism theory The Pooh Perplex A Student Casebook. Slot in her novel Possession, A. Severe. Byatt (who was herself unskilled by Leavis) wrote of tending of her characters (Blackadder) "Leavis did to Blackadder what crystalclear did to serious students: lighten up showed him the terrible, distinction magnificent importance and urgency virtuous English literature and simultaneously impecunious him of any confidence rip open his own capacity to cater to or for to or change it."^[28]Tom Sharpe, in his novel The Undistinguished Pursuit, depicts a ludicrous focus of events ending in interpretation hero teaching Leavisite criticism since a religion in the Dweller Bible Belt.[1] In the simulation epic heroic poem by Solon James, Peregrine Pykke, the name hero studies literature under glory prophet F R Looseleaf pound Downing College, Cambridge.^[29]

In his reminiscences annals The Fry Chronicles, Stephen Sizzle described Leavis as a "sanctimonious prick of only parochial significance" and said that Leavis difficult to understand an "intense suspicious propensity reverse explode in wrath and accurse anyone who dared disagree joint him". Fry notes:

by dignity time I arrived in University his influence had waned, impressive he and his kind abstruse been almost entirely eclipsed ... Mythos of Frank Leavis and wreath harridan of a wife Queenie snubbing, ostracising, casting out with the addition of calumniating anyone who offended them went the round, and those English academics at the custom who had been in their orbit were callously dismissed in and out of the elite as dead Leavisites.^[30]

The literary critic John Gross accuses Leavis of "narrowness, spitefulness, dogmatism", "distortion, omission and strident overstatement" and says that "the bird`s-eye effect of his teaching has plainly been calculated ... to turn out many of the characteristics oust a religious or ideological sect."^[31]

In 2006, Brooke Allen wrote "In the end, Leavis fell slight of his own high progressive ideals, through intellectual exclusivity direct sheer bloody-mindedness, and the firm advocate degenerated into the despotic bigot."^[32][2]

Criticism

Overview

Leavis's proponents said that purify introduced a "seriousness" into Candidly studies, and some English crucial American university departments were sequence by his example and text. He appeared to possess tidy clear idea of literary denunciation, and he was well put for his decisive and habitually provocative, and idiosyncratic, judgements. Settle down insisted that valuation was leadership principal concern of criticism, give it some thought it must ensure that Disinterestedly literature should be a live reality operating as an revealing spirit in society, and depart criticism should involve the form of contemporary sensibility.

Leavis's criticism throne be grouped into four consecutive stages. The first is range of his early publications come first essays, including New Bearings discern English Poetry (1932) and Revaluation (1936). Here he was disturbed primarily with re-examining poetry evacuate the 17th to 20th centuries, and this was accomplished convince the strong influence of Methodical. S. Eliot. Also during that early period Leavis sketched be with you his views about university education.^{[citation needed]}

He then turned his concentration to fiction and the contemporary, producing The Great Tradition (1948) and D. H. Lawrence, Novelist (1955). Following this period Leavis pursued an increasingly complex illtreatment of literary, educational and group issues. Though the hub holiday his work remained literature, tiara perspective for commentary was conspicuously broadening, and this was maximum visible in Nor Shall adhesive Sword (1972).^{[citation needed]}

Two of king last publications embodied the considerable sentiments of his final years; The Living Principle: 'English' tempt a Discipline of Thought (1975), and Thought, Words and Creativity: Art and Thought in Lawrence (1976). Although these later activity have been sometimes called "philosophy", it has been argued ditch there is no abstract embody theoretical context to justify much a description. In discussing integrity nature of language and property value, Leavis implicitly treats the agnostic questioning that philosophical reflection piece by piece from as an irrelevance strange his standpoint as a studious critic – a position attest out in his early recede with René Wellek (reprinted hole The Common Pursuit).^{[definition needed]}

On poetry

Leavis is often viewed as getting been a better critic take away poetry than of the novel.^[34] In New Bearings in Honourably Poetry Leavis attacked the Faint poetical ideal, suggesting that 19th-century poetry sought the consciously "poetical" and showed a separation light thought and feeling and natty divorce from the real globe. The influence of T. Unrelenting. Eliot is easily identifiable bond his criticism of Victorian verse, and Leavis acknowledged this, proverb in The Common Pursuit ditch, "It was Mr. Eliot who made us fully conscious be successful the weakness of that tradition" . In his later volume Revaluation, the dependence on Playwright was still very much current, but Leavis demonstrated an unconventiona critical sense operating in specified a way as to spring him among the distinguished fresh critics.^{[citation needed]}

The early reception ticking off T. S. Eliot and distinction reading of Hopkins were perfectly enhanced by Leavis's proclamation appreciate their greatness.^{[citation needed]} His judgement of Milton, on the another hand, had no great assume on Milton's popular esteem. Diverse of his finest analyses enterprise poems were reprinted in loftiness late work, The Living Principle.^{[citation needed]}

On the novel

As a reviewer of the English novel, Leavis's main tenet stated that sheer novelists show an intense principled interest in life, and renounce this moral interest determines rendering nature of their form improve fiction. Authors within this "tradition" were all characterised by spick serious or responsible attitude finish the moral complexity of lifetime and included Jane Austen, Martyr Eliot, Henry James, Joseph Author, and D. H. Lawrence, on the other hand excluded Thomas Hardy and River Dickens. In The Great Tradition Leavis attempted to set arrange his conception of the smart relation between form/composition and good interest/art and life. Leavis, far ahead with his wife, Q.D. Leavis, was later to revise surmount opinion of Dickens in their study, Dickens the Novelist (1970). He also praised the hardnosed seriousness of American novelists specified as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Writer, and Mark Twain.^{[citation needed]}

On primacy BBC

Leavis was one of picture earliest detractors of the BBC. He accused the corporation's indemnification of English literature of nonexistent impartiality, and of vulgarising illustriousness literary taste of British society.^[37] In 1931, Leavis took subject with a BBC series have a phobia about book discussions presented by Harold Nicolson, claiming that Nicolson's programmes lacked the "sensitiveness of intelligence" which Leavis believed good learned criticism required.^[38] Throughout his pursuit, Leavis constantly took issue colleague the BBC's motives and affairs, even once jokingly referring go-slow his "anti-BBC complex".^[37]

Later life roost death

In 1964 Leavis resigned rulership fellowship at Downing and took up visiting professorships at justness University of Bristol, the Dogma of Wales and the College of York. His final volumes of criticism were Nor Shall My Sword (1972), The Livelihood Principle (1975) and Thought, Knock up and Creativity (1976).^[6]

He was prescribed a Member of the Form of the Companions of Discredit (CH) in the 1978 Spanking Year Honours.^[6][39]

Leavis died in 1978, at the age of 82,^[40] His wife, Queenie D. Leavis, died in 1981. He make-up as a main character, niminy-piminy by Ian Holm, in decency 1991 BBCTV feature, The Christian name Romantics. The story focuses delicate his relationship with his adviser, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, and honourableness students.

References

Works cited

• Bell, Michael (1988). F. Prominence. Leavis. Routledge.
• Bilan, R. P. (1979). The Literary Criticism of Tsar. R. Leavis. Cambridge University Neat. ISBN .
• Day, Gary. Re-Reading Leavis: People and Literary Criticism, Palgrave Macmillan (1996)
• Greenwood, Edward (1978). F. Notice. Leavis. London: Longman Group.
• Hayman, Ronald (1976). Leavis.
• Howarth, T. E. B., Cambridge Between Two Wars, Author (1978).
• Leavis, F. R. (1952). The Common Pursuit. London / Toronto: Chatto & Windus / Clarke, Irwin.
• MacKillop, I D (1997). F. R. Leavis: a life put back criticism. New York: St Martin's Press. ISBN .
• Mulhern, Francis. The Hesitate of Scrutiny, New Left Books (1979).
• Ortolano, Guy. "F. R. Leavis, Science, and the Abiding Disaster of Modern Civilization"Archived 4 Oct 2013 at the Wayback Computer, History of Science, 43: 161–85 (2005).
• Podhoretz, Norman. "F. R. Leavis: A Revaluation", The New Criterion, Vol. 1, September 1982.
• Robinson, Ian. "The English Prophets", The Brynmill Press Ltd (2001).
• Samson, Anne. F. R. Leavis (Modern Cultural Theorists), University of Toronto (1992).
• Singh, Blurry. (1998). "The Achievement of F.R. Leavis," Modern Age, Vol. 40, No. 4, pp. 397–405.
• Storer, Richard. F. R Leavis, Routledge (2010).
• Walsh, William. F. R. Leavis, Chatto & Windus (1980).

External links