Frank Raymond "F. R." Leavis (14 July 1895 – 14 April 1978) was an English

literary critic Literary criticism (or literary studies) is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of literature's goals and methods. Th ...

of the early-to-mid-twentieth century. He taught for much of his career at

Downing College, Cambridge Downing College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge and currently has around 650 students. Founded in 1800, it was the only college to be added to Cambridge University between 1596 and 1869, and is often described as the olde ...

, and later at the

University of York , mottoeng = On the threshold of wisdom , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £8.0 million , budget = £403.6 million , chancellor = Heather Melville , vice_chancellor = Charlie Jeffery , students ...

. Leavis ranked among the most prominent English-language critics in the 1950s and 1960s.

J. B. Bamborough John Bernard Bamborough (3 January 1921 – 13 February 2009) was a British scholar of English literature and founding Principal of Linacre College, Oxford. Bamborough was educated at The Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School in Elstree, H ...

wrote of him in 1963: "it would be true to say that in the last thirty or more years hardly anyone seriously concerned with the study of English literature has not been influenced by him in some way." According to

Clive James Clive James (born Vivian Leopold James; 7 October 1939 – 24 November 2019) was an Australian critic, journalist, broadcaster, writer and lyricist who lived and worked in the United Kingdom from 1962 until his death in 2019.Trinity Street, gown blown out horizontal in his slipstream. He looked as if walking briskly was something he had practised in a wind-tunnel."

Early life and education

Leavis was born in Cambridge in 1895 to Harry Leavis (1862–1921) and Kate Sarah Moore (1874–1929). His father was a cultured man who ran a shop in Cambridge that sold pianos and other musical instruments, and his son was to retain a respect for him throughout his life. Leavis was educated at a fee-paying independent school (in English terms a minor public school),

The Perse School (He who does things for others does them for himself) , established = , closed = , type = Public schoolIndependent day school , religion = Nondenominational Christian , president = , head_label = Head , he ...

, whose headmaster was Dr

W. H. D. Rouse William Henry Denham Rouse (; 30 May 1863 – 10 February 1950) was a pioneering British teacher who advocated the use of the "direct method" of teaching Latin and Greek. Life Rouse was born in Calcutta, British India on 30 May 1863. After his f ...

. Rouse was a classicist and known for his "direct method", a practice which required teachers to carry on classroom conversations with their pupils in Latin and classical Greek. Though he had some fluency in foreign languages, Leavis felt that his native language was the only one on which he was able to speak with authority. His extensive reading in the classical languages is not therefore strongly evident in his work. Leavis had won a scholarship from the Perse School to

Emmanuel College, Cambridge Emmanuel College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1584 by Sir Walter Mildmay, Chancellor of the Exchequer to Elizabeth I. The site on which the college sits was once a priory for Dominican mon ...

, to study history. Britain declared war on Germany soon after he matriculated, when he was 19. Leavis left Cambridge after his first year as an undergraduate and joined the Friends' Ambulance Unit (FAU) at York in 1915. After the introduction of

conscription Conscription (also called the draft in the United States) is the state-mandated enlistment of people in a national service, mainly a military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and it continues in some countries to the present day un ...

in 1916, when his brother Ralph also joined the FAU, he benefited from the blanket recognition of the members of the Friends' Ambulance Unit as conscientious objectors. Leavis is quoted as saying: "But after the Bloody Somme there could be no question for anyone who knew what modern war was like of joining the army." He worked in France behind the

Western Front Western Front or West Front may refer to: Military frontiers *Western Front (World War I), a military frontier to the west of Germany *Western Front (World War II), a military frontier to the west of Germany *Western Front (Russian Empire), a majo ...

, carrying a copy of Milton's poems with him. His wartime experiences had a lasting effect on him, making him prone to insomnia. He maintained that exposure to poison gas retained in the clothes of soldiers who had been gassed damaged his physical health, but that his poor digestion was due to "...not gas at Ypres, but the things I didn't say". Leavis was slow to recover from the war, and he was later to refer to it as "the great hiatus". He said: "The war, to put it egotistically, was bad luck for us." On his return from the war in 1919, Leavis changed his field of study to English and became a pupil in the newly founded English School at Cambridge. Despite graduating with first-class honours, Leavis was not seen as a strong candidate for a research fellowship and instead embarked on a

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...

, then an unusual career move for an aspiring academic. In 1924, Leavis presented a thesis on ''The Relationship of Journalism to Literature'', which "studied the rise and earlier development of the press in England". This work contributed to his lifelong concern with the way in which the ethos of a periodical can both reflect and mould the cultural aspirations of a wider public.

Career

In 1927 Leavis was appointed as a probationary lecturer for the university, and, when his first substantial publications began to appear a few years later, their style was much influenced by the demands of teaching. In 1929 Leavis married one of his students,

Queenie Roth Queenie Dorothy Leavis (née Roth, 7 December 1906 – 17 March 1981) was an English literary critic and essayist.Mary Grover, "Leavis, Q.D." in Faye Hammill, Esme Miskimmin, Ashlie Sponenberg (eds.) ''An Encyclopedia of British Women's Writing 19 ...

, and this union resulted in a collaboration that yielded many critical works. 1932 was an '' annus mirabilis'' for them, when Leavis published ''New Bearings in English Poetry'', his wife published ''Fiction and the Reading Public'', and the quarterly periodical ''

Scrutiny Scrutiny (French: ''scrutin''; Late Latin: ''scrutinium''; from ''scrutari'', meaning "those who search through piles of rubbish in the hope of finding something of value" and originally from the Latin "scruta," meaning "broken things, rags, or ...

'' was founded. A small publishing house, The Minority Press, was founded by Gordon Fraser, another of Leavis's students, in 1930, and served for several years as an additional outlet for the work of Leavis and some of his students. In 1931 Leavis was appointed director of studies in English at Downing College, where he taught for the next 30 years. He soon founded ''Scrutiny'', the critical quarterly that he edited until 1953, using it as a vehicle for the new Cambridge criticism, upholding rigorous intellectual standards and attacking the dilettante elitism he believed to characterise the

Bloomsbury Group The Bloomsbury Group—or Bloomsbury Set—was a group of associated English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists in the first half of the 20th century, including Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster and Lytton Strac ...

. ''Scrutiny'' provided a forum for (on occasion) identifying important contemporary work and (more commonly) reviewing the traditional canon by serious criteria. This criticism was informed by a teacher's concern to present the essential to students, taking into consideration time constraints and a limited range of experience. ''New Bearings in English Poetry'' was the first major volume of criticism Leavis was to publish, and it provides insight into his own critical positions. He has been frequently (but often erroneously) associated with the American school of

New Critics New Criticism was a formalist movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned as ...

, a group which advocated close reading and detailed textual analysis of poetry over, or even instead of, an interest in the mind and personality of the poet, sources, the history of ideas and political and social implications. Although there are undoubtedly similarities between Leavis's approach to criticism and that of the New Critics (most particularly in that both take the work of art itself as the primary focus of critical discussion), Leavis is ultimately distinguishable from them, since he never adopted (and was explicitly hostile to) a theory of the poem as a self-contained and self-sufficient aesthetic and formal artefact, isolated from the society, culture and tradition from which it emerged. ''New Bearings'', devoted principally to

Gerard Manley Hopkins Gerard Manley Hopkins (28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889) was an English poet and Jesuit priest, whose posthumous fame placed him among leading Victorian poets. His prosody – notably his concept of sprung rhythm – established him as an innovato ...

, William Butler Yeats,

T. S. Eliot Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National Biogr ...

, and

Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...

, was an attempt to identify the essential new achievements in modern poetry. It also discussed at length and praised the work of Ronald Bottrall, whose importance was not to be confirmed by readers and critics. In 1933 Leavis published ''For Continuity'', which was a selection of ''Scrutiny'' essays. This publication, along with ''Culture and the Environment'' (a joint effort with Denys Thompson), stressed the importance of an informed and discriminating, highly trained intellectual elite whose existence within university English departments would help preserve the cultural continuity of English life and literature. In ''Education and the University'' (1943), Leavis argued that "there is a prior cultural achievement of language; language is not a detachable instrument of thought and communication. It is the historical embodiment of its community's assumptions and aspirations at levels which are so subliminal much of the time that language is their only index". Leavis is sometimes seen as having contributed to the mythos of Merrie England with his notion of the "organic community", by which he seems to have meant a community with a deeply rooted and locally self-sufficient culture that he claimed to have existed in the villages of 17th and 18th century England and which was destroyed by the machine and mass culture introduced by the industrial revolution. Historians of the era have suggested that the idea was based on a misreading of history and that such communities had never existed. No historians of Early Modern Britain have supported the notion of the organic community. In 1948, Leavis focused his attention on fiction and made his general statement about the English novel in ''

The Great Tradition ''The Great Tradition'' is a book of literary criticism written by F R Leavis, published in 1948 by Chatto & Windus. Highlights of the book In his work, Leavis names Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry James, and Joseph Conrad as the great English ...

'', where he traced this claimed tradition through

Jane Austen Jane Austen (; 16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels, which interpret, critique, and comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Austen's plots of ...

, George Eliot, Henry James, and

Joseph Conrad Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, ; 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was a Poles in the United Kingdom#19th century, Polish-British novelist and short story writer. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in t ...

. Contentiously, Leavis, and his followers, excluded major authors such as Charles Dickens, Laurence Sterne and

Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry of William Word ...

from his canon, characterising Dickens as a "mere entertainer", but eventually, following the revaluation of Dickens by Edmund Wilson and

George Orwell Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitar ...

, Leavis changed his position, publishing ''Dickens the Novelist'' in 1970. The Leavisites' downgrading of Hardy may have damaged Leavis's own authority. In 1950, in the introduction to ''Mill on Bentham and Coleridge'', a publication he edited, Leavis set out the historical importance of utilitarian thought. Leavis found Bentham to epitomize the scientific drift of culture and social thinking, which was in his view the enemy of the holistic, humane understanding he championed. ''The Common Pursuit'', another collection of his essays from ''Scrutiny'', was published in 1952. Outside his work on English poetry and the novel, this is Leavis's best-known and most influential work. A decade later Leavis was to earn much notoriety when he delivered his Richmond lecture, ''Two Cultures? The Significance of C. P. Snow'' at Downing College. Leavis vigorously attacked Snow's suggestion, from a 1959 lecture and book by C. P. Snow (see '' The Two Cultures''), that practitioners of the scientific and humanistic disciplines should have some significant understanding of each other, and that a lack of knowledge of 20th century physics was comparable to an ignorance of Shakespeare. Leavis's ''ad hominem'' attacks on Snow's intelligence and abilities were widely decried in the British press by public figures such as

Lord Boothby Robert John Graham Boothby, Baron Boothby, (12 February 1900 – 16 July 1986), often known as Bob Boothby, was a British Conservative politician. Early life The only son of Sir Robert Tuite Boothby, KBE, of Edinburgh and a cousin of Rosalind ...

and

Lionel Trilling Lionel Mordecai Trilling (July 4, 1905 – November 5, 1975) was an American literary critic, short story writer, essayist, and teacher. He was one of the leading U.S. critics of the 20th century who analyzed the contemporary cultural, social, ...

. Leavis introduced the idea of the "third realm" as a name for the method of existence of literature; works which are not private like a dream or public in the sense of something that can be tripped over, but exist in human minds as a work of collaborative re-constitution. The notion of the "third realm" has not received much attention subsequently.

Character and reputation

As Leavis continued his career he became increasingly dogmatic, belligerent and paranoid, and Martin Seymour-Smith found him (and his disciples) to be "fanatic and rancid in manner". Leavis's conduct led to a breach with T. S. Eliot, who wrote Leavis's uncompromising zeal in promoting his views of literature drew mockery from quarters of the literary world involved in imaginative writing. In a letter that Edith Sitwell wrote to Pamela Hansford Johnson in 1959 she described Leavis as "a tiresome, whining, pettyfogging little pipsqueak". Leavis (as "Simon Lacerous") and Scrutiny (as "Thumbscrew") were satirized by

Frederick Crews Frederick Campbell Crews (born 20 February 1933) is an American essayist and literary critic. Professor emeritus of English at the University of California, Berkeley, Crews is the author of numerous books, including ''The Tragedy of Manners: M ...

in the chapter "Another Book to Cross off your List" of his lampoon of literary criticism theory '' The Pooh Perplex A Student Casebook''. In her novel ''

Possession Possession may refer to: Law * Dependent territory, an area of land over which another country exercises sovereignty, but which does not have the full right of participation in that country's governance * Drug possession, a crime * Ownership * ...

'',

A. S. Byatt Dame Antonia Susan Duffy ( Drabble; born 24 August 1936), known professionally by her former marriage name as A. S. Byatt ( ), is an English critic, novelist, poet and short story writer. Her books have been widely translated, into more than t ...

(who was herself taught by Leavis) wrote of one of her characters (Blackadder) "Leavis did to Blackadder what he did to serious students: he showed him the terrible, the magnificent importance and urgency of English literature and simultaneously deprived him of any confidence in his own capacity to contribute to or change it." Tom Sharpe, in his novel ''

The Great Pursuit ''The Great Pursuit'' is a 1977 comic novel by Tom Sharpe. It is a satire encompassing commercialism in publishing and literary criticism. Plot introduction The story is a farce about greed in the publishing world, and the struggle between li ...

'', depicts a ludicrous series of events ending in the hero teaching Leavisite criticism as a religion in the American Bible Bel

In the mock epic heroic poem by

Clive James Clive James (born Vivian Leopold James; 7 October 1939 – 24 November 2019) was an Australian critic, journalist, broadcaster, writer and lyricist who lived and worked in the United Kingdom from 1962 until his death in 2019.The Fry Chronicles ''The Fry Chronicles: An Autobiography'' is the 2010 autobiography of Stephen Fry. The book is a continuation from the end of his 1997 publication of his first autobiography, '' Moab Is My Washpot: An Autobiography''. Though without a strict ch ...

'', Stephen Fry described Leavis as a "sanctimonious prick of only parochial significance" and said that Leavis had an "intense suspicious propensity to explode in wrath and anathematize anyone who dared disagree with him". Fry notes: The literary critic

John Gross John Gross FRSL (12 March 1935 – 10 January 2011) was an eminent English man of letters. A leading intellectual, writer, anthologist, and critic, ''The Guardian'' (in a tribute titled "My Hero") and ''The Spectator'' were among several pub ...

accuses Leavis of "narrowness, spitefulness, dogmatism", "distortion, omission and strident overstatement" and says that "the overall effect of his teaching has plainly been calculated ... to produce many of the characteristics of a religious or ideological sect."

Criticism

Overview

Leavis's proponents said that he introduced a "seriousness" into English studies, and some English and American university departments were shaped by his example and ideas. He appeared to possess a clear idea of literary criticism, and he was well known for his decisive and often provocative, and idiosyncratic, judgements. He insisted that valuation was the principal concern of criticism, that it must ensure that English literature should be a living reality operating as an informing spirit in society, and that criticism should involve the shaping of contemporary sensibility. Leavis's criticism can be grouped into four chronological stages. The first is that of his early publications and essays, including ''New Bearings in English Poetry'' (1932) and ''Revaluation'' (1936). Here he was concerned primarily with re-examining poetry from the 17th to 20th centuries, and this was accomplished under the strong influence of T. S. Eliot. Also during this early period Leavis sketched out his views about university education. He then turned his attention to fiction and the novel, producing ''The Great Tradition'' (1948) and ''D. H. Lawrence, Novelist'' (1955). Following this period Leavis pursued an increasingly complex treatment of literary, educational and social issues. Though the hub of his work remained literature, his perspective for commentary was noticeably broadening, and this was most visible in ''Nor Shall my Sword'' (1972). Two of his last publications embodied the critical sentiments of his final years; ''The Living Principle: 'English' as a Discipline of Thought'' (1975), and ''Thought, Words and Creativity: Art and Thought in Lawrence'' (1976). Although these later works have been sometimes called "philosophy", it has been argued that there is no abstract or theoretical context to justify such a description. In discussing the nature of language and value, Leavis implicitly treats the sceptical questioning that philosophical reflection starts from as an irrelevance from his standpoint as a literary critic – a position set out in his early exchange with René Wellek (reprinted in ''The Common Pursuit'').

On poetry

Leavis is often viewed as having been a better critic of poetry than of the novel. In ''New Bearings in English Poetry'' Leavis attacked the Victorian poetical ideal, suggesting that 19th-century poetry sought the consciously "poetical" and showed a separation of thought and feeling and a divorce from the real world. The influence of

is easily identifiable in his criticism of

Victorian poetry Victorian literature refers to English literature during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901). The 19th century is considered by some to be the Golden Age of English Literature, especially for British novels. It was in the Victorian era th ...

, and Leavis acknowledged this, saying in ''The Common Pursuit'' that, "It was Mr. Eliot who made us fully conscious of the weakness of that tradition" . In his later publication ''Revaluation'', the dependence on Eliot was still very much present, but Leavis demonstrated an individual critical sense operating in such a way as to place him among the distinguished modern critics. The early reception of

and the reading of

Hopkins Hopkins is an English, Welsh and Irish patronymic surname. The English name means "son of Hob". ''Hob'' was a diminutive of ''Robert'', itself deriving from the Germanic warrior name ''Hrod-berht'', translated as "renowned-fame". The Robert spell ...

were considerably enhanced by Leavis's proclamation of their greatness. His criticism of

Milton Milton may refer to: Names * Milton (surname), a surname (and list of people with that surname) ** John Milton (1608–1674), English poet * Milton (given name) ** Milton Friedman (1912–2006), Nobel laureate in Economics, author of '' Free t ...

, on the other hand, had no great impact on Milton's popular esteem. Many of his finest analyses of poems were reprinted in the late work, ''The Living Principle''.

On the novel

As a critic of the English novel, Leavis's main tenet stated that great novelists show an intense moral interest in life, and that this moral interest determines the nature of their form in fiction. Authors within this "tradition" were all characterised by a serious or responsible attitude to the moral complexity of life and included

, George Eliot, Henry James,

, and

D. H. Lawrence David Herbert Lawrence (11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930) was an English writer, novelist, poet and essayist. His works reflect on modernity, industrialization, sexuality, emotional health, vitality, spontaneity and instinct. His best-k ...

, but excluded

and Charles Dickens. In ''

'' Leavis attempted to set out his conception of the proper relation between form/composition and moral interest/art and life. This proved to be a contentious issue in the critical world, as Leavis refused to separate art from life, or the aesthetic or formal from the moral. He insisted that the great novelist's preoccupation with form was a matter of responsibility towards a rich moral interest, and that works of art with a limited formal concern would always be of lesser quality. Leavis, along with his wife, Q.D. Leavis, was later to revise his opinion of Dickens in their study, ''Dickens the Novelist'' (1970). He also praised the moral seriousness of American novelists such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and

Mark Twain Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has p ...

On the BBC

Leavis was one of the earliest detractors of the BBC. He accused the corporation's coverage of English literature of lacking impartiality, and of vulgarising the literary taste of British society.Christopher Hilliard, ''English as a Vocation: The 'Scrutiny' Movement''. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012 . (p. 96) In 1931, Leavis took issue with a BBC series of book discussions presented by

Harold Nicolson Sir Harold George Nicolson (21 November 1886 – 1 May 1968) was a British politician, diplomat, historian, biographer, diarist, novelist, lecturer, journalist, broadcaster, and gardener. His wife was the writer Vita Sackville-West. Early lif ...

, claiming that Nicolson's programmes lacked the "sensitiveness of intelligence" which Leavis believed good literary criticism required. Throughout his career, Leavis constantly took issue with the BBC's motives and actions, even once jokingly referring to his "anti-BBC complex".

Later life and death

In 1964 Leavis resigned his fellowship at Downing and took up visiting professorships at the University of Bristol, the University of Wales and the

. His final volumes of criticism were ''Nor Shall My Sword'' (1972), ''The Living Principle'' (1975) and ''Thought, Words and Creativity'' (1976). These later works are notable for their more discursive treatment of the issues he had debated with

René Wellek René Wellek (August 22, 1903 – November 10, 1995) was a Czech- American comparative literary critic. Like Erich Auerbach, Wellek was an eminent product of the Central European philological tradition and was known as a vastly erudite and ...

in the 1930s. Leavis died in 1978, at the age of 82,Ezard, John (18 April 1978)
"Obituary: Frank Raymond Leavis"
''The Guardian''. having been made a

Companion of Honour The Order of the Companions of Honour is an order of the Commonwealth realms. It was founded on 4 June 1917 by King George V as a reward for outstanding achievements. Founded on the same date as the Order of the British Empire, it is sometimes ...

in the previous New Year Honours. His wife, Queenie D. Leavis, died in 1981. He features as a main character, played by Ian Holm, in the 1991 BBC TV feature
''The Last Romantics''
The story focuses on his relationship with his mentor, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, and the students. More recently, in a revival of interest in his work, he has been the subject of a series of conferences at the University of York and at Downing College, Cambridge.

References

Works cited

* * * Day, Gary. ''Re-Reading Leavis: Culture and Literary Criticism'', Palgrave Macmillan (1996) * * * * * Mulhern, Francis. ''The Moment of Scrutiny'', London: New Left Books, 1979. * Ortolano, Guy
"F. R. Leavis, Science, and the Abiding Crisis of Modern Civilization"
''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). * Singh, G. (1998). "The Achievement of F.R. Leavis," ''Modern Age'', Vol. 40, No. 4, pp. 397–405. * Storer, Richard. ''F. R Leavis'', Routledge (2010)

External links

Works by F. R. Leavis
at Internet Archive
another link

F. R. Leavis in America

The Leavis Society
{{DEFAULTSORT:Leavis, F. R. 1895 births 1978 deaths Academics of the University of Bristol Academics of the University of Wales Academics of the University of York Alumni of Emmanuel College, Cambridge English conscientious objectors English literary critics Fellows of Downing College, Cambridge New Criticism People associated with the Friends' Ambulance Unit People educated at The Perse School People from Cambridge