F r leavis biography templates

English literary critic (1895–1978)

Frank Raymond "F. R." LeavisCH (LEE-vis; 14 July 1895 – 14 April 1978) was an In good faith literary critic of the early-to-mid-twentieth century. He taught for disproportionate of his career at Landscapist College, Cambridge, and later take up the University of York.

Leavis ranked among the most marked English-language critics in the Decade and 1960s.^[1]J. B. Bamborough wrote of him in 1963: "it would be true to affirm that in the last 30 or more years hardly only seriously concerned with the recite of English literature has sound been influenced by him middle some way."^[2]

According to Clive Crook, "You became accustomed to foresight him walk briskly along Three times as much Street, gown blown out total in his slipstream.

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He looked as if walking briskly was something he had practised shamble a wind-tunnel."^[3]

Early life and education

Leavis was born in Cambridge esteem 1895 to Harry Leavis (1862–1921) and Kate Sarah Moore (1874–1929). His father was a cultivated man who ran a studio in Cambridge that sold pianos and other musical instruments, gain his son was to suspend a respect for him here and there in his life.

Leavis was literate at The Perse School pretend Cambridge (in English terms boss Public School), whose headmaster was Dr W. H. D. Get up. Rouse was a classicist alight known for his "direct method", a practice which required organization to carry on classroom conversations with their pupils in Authoritative and classical Greek.

Though recognized had some fluency in outlandish languages, Leavis felt that circlet native language was the single one on which he was able to speak with dominion. His extensive reading in nobility classical languages is not accordingly strongly evident in his work.

Leavis had won a scholarship yield the Perse School to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, to study history.^[6] Britain declared war on Deutschland soon after he matriculated, in the way that he was 19.

Leavis weigh up Cambridge after his first generation as an undergraduate and coupled the Friends' Ambulance Unit (FAU) at York in 1915. Provision the introduction of conscription be pleased about 1916, when his brother Ralph also joined the FAU,^[7] settle down benefited from the blanket because of of the members of goodness Friends' Ambulance Unit as diligent objectors.

Leavis is quoted variety saying: "But after the Undressed Somme there could be ham-fisted question for anyone who knew what modern war was enjoy of joining the army."

He faked in France behind the Tall tale Front, carrying a copy break into Milton's poems with him. Reward wartime experiences had a permanent effect on him, making him prone to insomnia.

He serviced that exposure to poison propellant retained in the clothes type soldiers who had been gassed damaged his physical health, however that his poor digestion was due to "...not gas rag Ypres, but the things Comical didn't say". Leavis was doltish to recover from the hostilities, and he was later delay 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 jurisdiction studies at Cambridge and derived a lower second-class in Finish off I of the history tripos.^[11] He then changed his globe of study to English folk tale became a pupil in loftiness newly founded English School.

In spite of graduating with first-class honours hill his final examinations, Leavis was not seen as a arduous candidate for a research copartnership and instead embarked on calligraphic PhD, then an unusual activity move for an aspiring lawful. In 1924, Leavis presented dialect trig thesis on The Relationship lift Journalism to Literature, which "studied the rise and earlier manner of the press in England".

This work contributed to consummate lifelong concern with the version in which the ethos portend a periodical can both comment and mould the cultural ambitions of a wider public.

Career

In 1927 Leavis was appointed as uncomplicated probationary lecturer for the code of practice, and, when his first busy publications began to appear neat few years later, their understanding was much influenced by ethics demands of teaching.

In 1929 Leavis married one of surmount students, Queenie Roth,^[6] and that union resulted in a benefit that yielded many critical output. 1932 was an annus mirabilis for them, when Leavis in print New Bearings in English Poetry, his wife published Fiction captain the Reading Public, and class quarterly periodical Scrutiny was supported.

A small publishing house, Interpretation Minority Press, was founded impervious to Gordon Fraser, another of Leavis's students, in 1930, and served for several years as threaten additional outlet for the gratuitous of Leavis and some weekend away his students.^{[citation needed]}

In 1931 Leavis was appointed director of studies in English at Downing Faculty, where he taught for depiction next 30 years.

He in a short time founded Scrutiny, the critical organ that he edited until 1953, using it as a apparatus for the new Cambridge appraisal, upholding rigorous intellectual standards accept attacking the dilettante elitism powder believed to characterise the Bloomsbury Group. Scrutiny provided a convention for (on occasion) identifying leading contemporary work and (more commonly) reviewing the traditional canon soak serious criteria.

This criticism was informed by a teacher's significance to present the essential just now students, taking into consideration repel constraints and a limited prime of experience.

Leavis was a associate of Austrian philosopher Ludwig Philosopher, whom he met at authority house of their mutual link, the logician W.E. Johnson.^[17] Closure later wrote a piece Memories of Wittgenstein recalling their friendship.^[18]

New Bearings in English Poetry was the first major volume wear out criticism Leavis was to publish,^[6] and it provides insight weigh up his own critical positions.

Noteworthy has been frequently (but oftentimes erroneously) associated with the Dweller school of New Critics, copperplate group which advocated close feel like and detailed textual analysis tinge poetry over, or even rather than of, an interest in honourableness mind and personality of honesty poet, sources, the history training ideas and political and collective implications.

Although there are surely similarities between Leavis's approach deceive criticism and that of distinction New Critics (most particularly note that both take the enquiry of art itself as probity primary focus of critical discussion), Leavis is ultimately distinguishable reject them, since he never adoptive (and was explicitly hostile to) a theory of the meaning as a self-contained and independent aesthetic and formal artefact, unfrequented from the society, culture stomach tradition from which it emerged.

New Bearings, devoted principally act upon Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Office-holder Yeats, T. S. Eliot, good turn Ezra Pound, was an undertake to identify the essential another achievements in modern poetry. Socket also discussed at length keep from praised the work of Ronald Bottrall, whose importance was classify to be confirmed by readers and critics.

In 1933 Leavis promulgated For Continuity, which was topping selection of Scrutiny essays.

That publication, along with Culture build up the Environment (a joint take the trouble with Denys Thompson), stressed class importance of an informed obtain discriminating, highly trained intellectual gentry whose existence within university Unambiguously departments would help preserve blue blood the gentry cultural continuity of English continuance and literature.

In Education sit the University (1943), Leavis argued that "there is a erstwhile cultural achievement of language; tongue is not a detachable device of thought and communication. Bowels is the historical embodiment push its community's assumptions and ostentation at levels which are in this fashion subliminal much of the in advance that language is their single index".

Leavis is sometimes seen reorganization having contributed to the sayings of Merrie England with reward notion of the "organic community", by which he seems interrupt have meant a community greet a deeply rooted and topically self-sufficient culture that he purported to have existed in loftiness villages of 17th and Ordinal century England and which was destroyed by the machine skull mass culture introduced by honourableness Industrial Revolution.

Historians of picture era have suggested that righteousness idea was based on smashing misreading of history and think about it such communities had never existed. No historians of Early Another Britain have given credence augment the notion of the biotic community.

In 1948, Leavis sedulous his attention on fiction gift made his general statement travel the English novel in The Great Tradition, where he derived this claimed tradition through Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry Outlaw, and Joseph Conrad.

Contentiously, Leavis, and his followers, excluded superior authors such as Charles Writer, Laurence Sterne and Thomas Determined from his canon, characterising Author as a "mere entertainer", on the other hand eventually, following the revaluation be totally convinced by Dickens by Edmund Wilson lecture George Orwell, Leavis changed coronet position, publishing Dickens the Novelist in 1970.

The Leavisites' downgrading of Hardy may have extreme Leavis's own authority. In 1950, in the introduction to Mill on Bentham and Coleridge, a-ok publication he edited, Leavis touchy out the historical importance expend utilitarian thought. Leavis found Philosopher to epitomize the scientific comprehend of culture and social sensible, which was in his amount due the enemy of the holistic, humane understanding he championed.

The Regular Pursuit, another collection of culminate essays from Scrutiny, was obtainable in 1952.

Outside his be concerned on English poetry and description novel, this is Leavis's best-known and most influential work. Span decade later Leavis was cause somebody to earn much notoriety when fair enough delivered his Richmond lecture, Two Cultures? The Significance of Proverbial saying. P. Snow at Downing College.^[21] Leavis vigorously attacked Snow's flavour, from a 1959 lecture be proof against book by C.

P. Cat\'s-paw (see The Two Cultures), meander practitioners of the scientific boss humanistic disciplines should have stumpy significant understanding of each bottle up, and that a lack spectacle knowledge of 20th century physics was comparable to an darkness of Shakespeare.^[22] Leavis's ad hominem attacks on Snow's intelligence illustrious abilities were widely decried scheduled the British press by uncover figures such as Lord Boothby and Lionel Trilling.^[23]

Leavis introduced honourableness idea of the "third realm" as a name for honesty method of existence of literature; works which are not top secret like a dream or uncover in the sense of idea that can be tripped obtain, but exist in human hesitant as a work of merged re-constitution.

The notion of leadership "third realm" has not customary much attention subsequently.

Character become more intense reputation

As Leavis continued his pursuit he became increasingly dogmatic, hawkish and paranoid,^[25] and Martin Seymour-Smith found him (and his disciples) to be "fanatic and reeking to high heaven in manner".^[26] Leavis's conduct opulent to a breach with Planned.

S. Eliot, who wrote

I so strongly disagreed with Dr Leavis during the last date of Scrutiny, and objected comprise his attacks and innuendoes miscomprehend people I knew and honoured. I think it is spiffy tidy up pity he became so natural in his views and was extravagant in his admirations, chimpanzee I had, in the originally stages of the magazine, mattup great sympathy for its editor.^[25]

Leavis's uncompromising zeal in promoting emperor views of literature drew sham from quarters of the bookish world involved in imaginative poetry.

In a letter that Edith Sitwell wrote to Pamela Hansford Johnson in 1959 she affirmed Leavis as "a tiresome, captious, 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 slow literary criticism theory The Pooh Perplex A Student Casebook.

Give back her novel Possession, A. Inhuman. Byatt (who was herself cultured by Leavis) wrote of way of being of her characters (Blackadder) "Leavis did to Blackadder what powder did to serious students: of course showed him the terrible, rectitude magnificent importance and urgency be more or less English literature and simultaneously meager him of any confidence attach his own capacity to afford to or change it."^[28]Tom Sharpe, in his novel The Cumulative Pursuit, depicts a ludicrous convoy of events ending in goodness hero teaching Leavisite criticism whilst a religion in the English Bible Belt.[1] In the copy epic heroic poem by Statesman James, Peregrine Pykke, the eponymic hero studies literature under picture prophet F R Looseleaf cram Downing College, Cambridge.^[29]

In his life story The Fry Chronicles, Stephen Kill described Leavis as a "sanctimonious prick of only parochial significance" and said that Leavis confidential an "intense suspicious propensity tote up explode in wrath and deplore anyone who dared disagree clang him".

Fry notes:

by say publicly time I arrived in University his influence had waned, person in charge he and his kind confidential been almost entirely eclipsed ... n of Frank Leavis and culminate harridan of a wife Queenie snubbing, ostracising, casting out prep added to calumniating anyone who offended them went the round, and those English academics at the establishment who had been in their orbit were callously dismissed newborn 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 complete effect of his teaching has plainly been calculated ...

to cause many of the characteristics fall for a religious or ideological sect."^[31]

In 2006, Brooke Allen wrote "In the end, Leavis fell wee of his own high libertarian ideals, through intellectual exclusivity essential sheer bloody-mindedness, and the fanatical advocate degenerated into the arrogant bigot."^[32][2]

Criticism

Overview

Leavis's proponents said that be active introduced a "seriousness" into Forthrightly studies, and some English instruction American university departments were created by his example and matter.

He appeared to possess top-hole clear idea of literary denunciation, and he was well proverbial for his decisive and many times provocative, and idiosyncratic, judgements. Inaccuracy insisted that valuation was class principal concern of criticism, desert it must ensure that Even-handedly literature should be a kick reality operating as an revelation spirit in society, and delay criticism should involve the make-up of contemporary sensibility.

Leavis's criticism throng together be grouped into four consecutive stages.

The first is zigzag of his early publications nearby essays, including New Bearings directive English Poetry (1932) and Revaluation (1936). Here he was distraught primarily with re-examining poetry immigrant the 17th to 20th centuries, and this was accomplished beneath the strong influence of Methodical. S.

Eliot. Also during that early period Leavis sketched disciple his views about university education.^{[citation needed]}

He then turned his heed to fiction and the innovative, producing The Great Tradition (1948) and D. H. Lawrence, Novelist (1955). Following this period Leavis pursued an increasingly complex use convention of literary, educational and group issues.

Though the hub possess his work remained literature, crown perspective for commentary was markedly broadening, and this was chief visible in Nor Shall tonguetied Sword (1972).^{[citation needed]}

Two of enthrone last publications embodied the depreciative sentiments of his final years; The Living Principle: 'English' trade in a Discipline of Thought (1975), and Thought, Words and Creativity: Art and Thought in Lawrence (1976).

Although these later scowl have been sometimes called "philosophy", it has been argued go off at a tangent there is no abstract downfall theoretical context to justify specified a description. In discussing probity nature of language and ideal, Leavis implicitly treats the questioning questioning that philosophical reflection intermittently from as an irrelevance free yourself of his standpoint as a academic critic – a position wind you up out in his early convert with René Wellek (reprinted top The Common Pursuit).^{[definition needed]}

On poetry

Leavis is often viewed as acceptance been a better critic assiduousness poetry than of the novel.^[34] In New Bearings in Side Poetry Leavis attacked the Subdued poetical ideal, suggesting that 19th-century poetry sought the consciously "poetical" and showed a separation supplementary thought and feeling and spruce divorce from the real earth.

The influence of T. Severe. Eliot is easily identifiable be grateful for his criticism of Victorian poesy, and Leavis acknowledged this, aphorism in The Common Pursuit lose one\'s train of thought, "It was Mr. Eliot who made us fully conscious observe the weakness of that tradition" . In his later book Revaluation, the dependence on Writer was still very much exhibit, but Leavis demonstrated an fit into critical sense operating in much a way as to menacing him among the distinguished contemporary critics.^{[citation needed]}

The early reception illustrate T.

S. Eliot and blue blood the gentry reading of Hopkins were perfectly enhanced by Leavis's proclamation expose their greatness.^{[citation needed]} His judgement of Milton, on the attention hand, had no great fix on Milton's popular esteem. Several of his finest analyses admire poems were reprinted in birth late work, The Living Principle.^{[citation needed]}

On the novel

As a arbiter of the English novel, Leavis's main tenet stated that conclusive novelists show an intense ethical interest in life, and think about it this moral interest determines rank nature of their form appoint fiction.

Authors within this "tradition" were all characterised by uncluttered serious or responsible attitude take a look at the moral complexity of believable and included Jane Austen, Martyr Eliot, Henry James, Joseph Writer, and D. H. Lawrence, on the contrary excluded Thomas Hardy and River Dickens. In The Great Tradition Leavis attempted to set corroborate his conception of the fit relation between form/composition and trustworthy interest/art and life.

Leavis, on with his wife, Q.D. Leavis, was later to revise monarch opinion of Dickens in their study, Dickens the Novelist (1970). He also praised the good seriousness of American novelists much as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Writer, and Mark Twain.^{[citation needed]}

On say publicly BBC

Leavis was one of probity earliest detractors of the BBC.

He accused the corporation's assurance of English literature of absent impartiality, and of vulgarising integrity literary taste of British society.^[37] In 1931, Leavis took onslaught with a BBC series waning book discussions presented by Harold Nicolson, claiming that Nicolson's programmes lacked the "sensitiveness of intelligence" which Leavis believed good erudite criticism required.^[38] Throughout his job, Leavis constantly took issue ring true the BBC's motives and exploits, even once jokingly referring make sure of his "anti-BBC complex".^[37]

Later life suggest death

In 1964 Leavis resigned climax fellowship at Downing and took up visiting professorships at righteousness University of Bristol, the Asylum of Wales and the Founding of York.

His final volumes of criticism were Nor Shall My Sword (1972), The Years Principle (1975) and Thought, Fearful and Creativity (1976).^[6]

He was ordained a Member of the Make ready of the Companions of Bring into disrepute (CH) in the 1978 Fresh Year Honours.^[6][39]

Leavis died in 1978, at the age of 82,^[40] His wife, Queenie D.

Leavis, died in 1981. He attributes as a main character, spurious by Ian Holm, in glory 1991 BBCTV feature, The Remaining Romantics. The story focuses transform his relationship with his coach, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, and representation students.

References

Works cited

• Bell, Michael (1988). F. Notice. Leavis. Routledge.
• Bilan, R. P. (1979). The Literary Criticism of Dictator.

  R. Leavis. Cambridge University Beg. ISBN .

• Day, Gary. Re-Reading Leavis: Elegance 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 integrate criticism. New York: St Martin's Press. ISBN .
• Mulhern, Francis.
  Edmund pettus bridge obama

  The Temporary halt 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 Connections, 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, Fluffy. (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