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Leavis and Literary Criticism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2009
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Philosophers almost by profession are minders of other people's business, that is their intellectual business; which, though a necessary trade, is not always a popular one. So Socrates found long ago. Discretion may therefore seem called for, and still more so in writing of Dr Leavis. Leavis is, so to speak, a hot subject; and not only so in himself, hence to be taken up with caution, but a cause that heat is in other men. Nor is that all; other, harder obstacles remain. It would seem that Leavis explicitly shuts the door on any philosophical approach. Philosophers, broadly speaking, deal in abstractions (even those who profess not to). Leavis wrote long ago, at the start of Revaluation, ‘No treatment of poetry can be worth much that does not keep very close to the concrete’. That ruling, which might debar my whole enterprise, I can take instead as raising immediately its main theme.
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- Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1976
References
1 Op. cit., p. 2.
2 F. R., and Q. D., Leavis, Lectures in America, p. 51Google Scholar. It is true that the emphasis here falls, rather tendentiously perhaps, on measuring and averaging. But they are run together with defining. All this is clearly of a piece with his general hostility to abstract thinking, which we have met and shall meet again, and to theory, which will concern us soon. It is a pretty comprehensive repudiation.
3 ‘Literary Criticism and Philosophy’ in The Common Pursuit, p. 213.
4 See for instance ‘Lawrence Scholarship and Lawrence’ in Anna Karenina and Other Essays, p. 195.
5 Scrutiny, XIII, 1945–46, p. 45.
6 Loc. cit., p. 59.
7 Op, cit., p. 57. Italics in original.
8 Leviathan, Ch. VI. The definition of courage, even if one recognizes it ask an emotion or ‘passion’ in Hobbes's phrase, is plainly faulty; for it implies that courage entails confidence.
9 Is this fair? For Leavis varies his examples. In an earlier and lengthier version of the present paper I looked at others too. But what he objects to in Calais Beach still seems to be akin to sentimentality; or at the very least it remains true that the notions at issue need clarifying.
10 Loc. cit., p. 59.
11 We should say boldly, I think, that the poem is best taken not as, it seems, the poet himself consciously and expressly took it; as referring to the personal, not the historical past.
12 I am indebted to the criticisms of a former student, Mr D. Wood-Stotesbury. Lawrence's ?Piano is reproduced by kind permission of Laurence Pollinger Ltd and the Estate of the late Mrs Frieda Lawrence.