Frank
Raymond
Leavis was born in 1895. He was one of the most important and controversial British
literary critics of the early to mid twentieth century. However, he never
really felt that he got the recognition that he deserved. He taught for most of
his life at Downing College, Cambridge, but he had to rely on part-time
teaching under he was given the post of assistant university lecturer in 1936.
F. R. Leavis formed a close working relationship with Queenie Dorothy Roth
(more commonly known as Q. D. Leavis), whom he married in 1929. From 1932 to
1953, F. R. Leavis was the chief editor of the journal “Scrutiny”, which,
although it made practically no money, was influential. F. R. Leavis published
his writings in “Scrutiny” before they were published in book form. He believe
that the study of literature should start and end with the text at hand, with
no resort to theory. Since his critical approach was never made explicit, it
remains somewhat mysterious, although F. R. Leavis is regarded as being
consistent in its application. Perhaps like we at Authortrek, F. R. Leavis
preferred to walk in the footsteps of the author, rather than to scythe out his
own path. He disliked the current literary culture as displayed in the Sunday
newspapers, although one could argue that this is a battle he did not win, as
they could be regarded as being just as lazy and nepotistic today. F. R. Leavis
also campaigned against the teaching of the literature that was prevalent at
the early part of the century, which concerned itself more with aesthetics than
with content. F. R. Leavis is often labelled as one of the “New Critics”,
because he championed writers such as T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Gerard
Manley Hopkins, whom he regarded as being superior to Victorian poets due to
their being more in touch with the thought of their age. He saw the modern poet
as being “the most conscious point of the race in his time”. F. R. Leavis
promoted what he called “The Great Tradition” of the English Novel, where
originality of style was subservient to the perceived moral consciousness of
the writer. To some extent, F. R. Leavis was a reactionary, disturbed by the
materialism of modern life, and what he saw as an assault of low culture on
high culture which must be defended by the literary elite in their high tower.
This elitism, and the romantic attraction to arts and crafts, are some of the
reasons why F. R. Leavis has been derided by some. However, it must be
countered that he also had social welfare interests at heart, and that he did
have a great positive effect upon the teaching of literature. Besides, F. R.
Leavis is in good company, as similar ideas were also expounded by folk such as
William Morris and the Situationists. F. R. Leavis also saw beyond the ‘dirty
bits’ in D. H. Lawrence, as he was one of the few critics to champion Lawrence.
Amongst the books F. R. Leavis wrote were: “Mass Civilization and Minority
Culture” (1930), “The Great Tradition: George Eliot, Henry James, Joseph
Conrad” (1948), “The Common Pursuit” (1952), “D. H. Lawrence: Novelist”
(1955), “Two Cultures? The Significance
of C. P. Snow” (1962), “Dickens the Novelist” (1970), and “Thought, Words and
Creativity: Art and Thought in D. H. Lawrence” (1976). F. R. Leavis died in
1978. His life story was dramatised in the BBC2 film “The Last Romantics”,
written by Nigel Williams.
F.R.Leavis did not have a theoretical approach to
criticism. Or rather, he did not overtly have one. Roland Barthes would have
criticised him for not declaring his ideology: his value system. Therefore, it
is hard to determine whether he had any consistency in his criticisms, for one
could surely use his own value system to judge his criticism if it was known.
Leavis objected to ideologies, such as Marxism, because they dealt with
abstractions and a whole world outside the text, whereas his concern began and
ended with the printed word. As Eagleton writes (1), the text almost became
‘reified’ as Leavis limited his focus to it.
Yet, there are signs in this passage that either Eagleton was in error,
or that this is not a typical piece of Leavis’s criticism. If a text can be
studied in isolation, then the question raised is why Leavis need write about
Wordsworth, the poet, instead of just his work. By writing about Wordsworth,
Leavis has gone beyond the text. There is more than just a hint that Leavis
knows something of Wordsworth’s life: ”his generously active sympathies had
involved him in emotional disasters that threatened his hold on life.” This
appears to be suspiciously like writing about the length of Tennyson’s beard
(2). Eagleton’s joke would seem to be inaccurate in this instance.
However, Leavis has not begun with a close reading of any literary text,
as he was wont to do. Rather, it would appear that this is an examination of
Wordsworth, itself and himself; for Wordsworth can mean both text and author,
just as Shakespeare can. To do this involves using psychology. Both F.R. and Q.
D. Leavis came from separate disciplines before they took up literary
criticism, and they used these
(1) Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory p.44.
(2) Eagleton p.44.
2
in their work; he had come from the field of history, and
she from psychology and anthropology. This allows Leavis to write “If
Wordsworth... was not quite this, this clearly is what he would have liked to
be.” It may not be that Leavis is using any particular school of psychology,
such as Freudian, for that would have involved an ideology. If it is anything,
it is Leavisite.
That such a word should exist is ironical. Many critics agree about what
ideology (or belief system) composed the world of Scrutiny. Leavis believed
that popular mass culture was destroying the traditional culture of Britain,
and in a way of life that had existed hundreds of years beforehand. He chose as
his model the organic village community, where people had been freer from the
universal tyranny of capitalism, where craftmanship had really meant something,
and so on. This is maybe why Leavis chose Wordsworth to discuss: ”that, ‘mid
the simpler forms of rural life,/Exist more simple in their elements,/And speak
a plainer language.” Perhaps Leavis sees something of himself in the poem, just
as he writes that Wordsworth does.
It would appear that Leavis is writing with an ideology in mind, and
that he is guilty of the same crime' that he has accused others of. For
instance, Leavis uses abstractions. “Impersonality” is certainly treated
as one by Vincent Buckley (3), and, according to him, it is not the only word
that Leavis employs in a specialised way. This would seem to imply that he is
writing for a certain audience. This is made more obvious by this extract:
”What did happen we know”. The question to ask is who are the ‘we’. Presumably,
Leavis refers not to himself, for he is not royalty. More likely, ‘we’ are a
community of more than one “intelligent reader”. It would also appear that this
community lacks humility. Indeed, as the Leavisites saw themselves as part of
the elite Minority, who had taken upon themselves to save the whole of
British culture, humility would have been an
(3) Vincent Buckley, Poetry and Morality p.174.
3
unwelcome hinderance. They thought it was harder for the
modern author to write, faced as he was by the plurality of modern society.
Yet, they recognised that there had always been a minority elite, far removed
from those who did indeed speak a “plainer language”. Leavis may further
identify himself with the poem, in the person of the Wanderer; the mobile,
educated, on-looker. Perhaps it is Leavis’s own tragedy that he is not the man
who “could afford to
suffer/With those whom he saw suffer.” The question at the end of the third
paragraph may have been one he asked himself.
Finally, it is very difficult therefore to appraise Leavis’s opinion of
Wordsworth, if one was not supposed to be part of his audience in the first
place. Surely one can only assess the probity of his comments by knowing
something about Wordsworth the man. Eagleton himself may have just made those
comments about Leavis so that he could have a curt introduction to a discussion
about the New Critics. Leavis focused his concerns, but that did not mean that
he would never discuss a poem’s context. However, there is a possibility that
other critics, used to debating in their own ideologies and value systems, have
created one for Leavis that they could apply to all his works. Modern psychology
argues that it is natural for human nature to conceptualise, to put things into
certain brackets, so that they are easier to hold in the mind. It is tempting
to write what Leavis ‘stood for’ in a single sentence, and accept that as a
truth. To be sure, Leavisite is not a word of which he would have approved.
4
Bibliography
Debating Texts edited by Rick Rylance.
Literary Theory: An Introduction by Terry Eagleton.
Poetry and Morality by Vincent Buckley.
The Social Mission of English Criticism 1848-1932 by
Chris Baldick.
F. R. Leavis on “Othello”
– read
some of Leavis’ criticism. Also F. R.
Leavis on Browning’s “Meeting at Midnight”
When
great minds met on the banks of the Cam – an anonymous and cheeky pastiche
of an encounter with F. R. Leavis
Obituary:
Professor L. C. Knights – this obituary of one of the founders of “Scrutiny”
gives some insight into the background of the journal
The Last Critic? The Importance of F. R. Leavis – Paul
Dean’s essay
Morality and Art: The
Claims of F. R. Leavis – Trevor Pateman’s essay
Q.
D. Leavis’s criticism: The human core – Reconsideration – John Ferns’ essay
Captivity
and Cultural Capital in the English novel – Nancy Armstrong’s essay
Pease, Allison "Readers with Bodies: Modernist
Criticism's Bridge Across the Cultural Divide"
Modernism/modernity - Volume 7, Number 1, January 2000, pp. 77-97
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Alloway,
Ross "Selling the Great Tradition: Resistance and Conformity in the
Publishing Practices of F.R. Leavis"
Book History - Volume 6, 2003, pp. 227-250
Penn State University Press
Stewart,
Stanley 1931- "Was Wittgenstein a Closet Literary Critic?"
New Literary History - Volume 34, Number 1, Winter 2003, pp. 43-57
The Johns Hopkins University Press – an essay that involves F. R. Leavis’
friendhip with Wittgenstein
Jaffe,
Aaron "Adjectives and the Work of Modernism in an Age of Celebrity"
The Yale Journal of Criticism - Volume 16, Number 1, Spring 2003, pp. 1-37
The Johns Hopkins University Press
F. R. Leavis: The "Great Tradition" of the English Novel and
the Jewish Part
Claudia L. Johnson
Nineteenth-Century Literature,
September
2001, Vol. 56, No. 2, Pages 198-227
