F.R. Leavis: A Literary Biography

As literary and social critic, educationalist and thinker, F.R. Leavis possessed a formidable and challenging mind. Leavis's influence on the critical tradition of his day and of ours, is enormous. In works such as New Bearings in English Poetry, Revaluations and The Great Tradition, and in his founding of Scrutiny, one of the most influential literary periodicals of the 20th century, he set new standards for criticism. For Leavis, literature was a criticism of life, the most effective way of training intelligence and sensibility. He saw literature as a discipline of thought, a vitalizing force. Behind Leavis's authoritative critiques there is both a concern for the artistic values a work embodies and a moral concern. Such critiques effectively amount to a reinterpretation not only of English literature but also of the criteria, procedures and ethos implicit in the business of literary criticism as such. This text is an account of Leavis as critic and thinker. It assesses the bitter controversies that his work so frequently invokes, his influence on the school of literary criticism, and his enduring intellectual legacy.