Literary Criticism and Philosophy - F. R. Leavis

Literary Criticism and Philosophy

           - F. R. Leavis

The essay literary criticism and philosophy was first published in scrutiny in the year 1937 and it was written in response to the suggestion of Wellek that Leavis should write about the theoretical basis of his criticism.

According to Wellek “Allow me to sketch your ideal of poetry, your norm with which you major every poet: your poetry must be in serious relation to actuality, in must have a firm grass on the actual, on the object, it must be in relation to life, it must not be cut off from direct vulgar, it should be normal human, testified to spiritual health and sanity, it should not be personal dreams and fantasies, there should be no emotion for its own sake in it… but a sharp, concrete realization, a sensuous particularity. The language of your poetry must not be cut of from speech, should not flatter the singing voice, and should not be merely mellifluous… I would ask you to defend your position more abstractly.”

In his reply, Leavis expresses his views on the discipline of literary criticism, and pleads that by making precise discriminations, he has advanced his theory Leavis says that literature criticism is “A distinct quite different from philosophy and its speculations”.

The reading demanded by poetry is of a different kind from that demanded by philosophy. The critic is the ideal leader of leader of poetry. The critic is concerned with evaluation, but judgment is not a question of applying and external “norm”.

The critics aim should be to realize as completely and sensitively as possible the experience that is given in the words. According to him “the business of the literary critic is to attain a peculiar completeness of response”. A critic should first observe the poetry and gave some times for the commentary.

Leavis defend his practice by pointing out that his critical assumption are implicit in his work “if I avoided such generalities, it was because they seemed too clumsy to be of any use. I thought I had provided something better”. He feels that the best way of presenting theoretical principles is to show then at work in practical criticism.

He believes in working in terms of “concrete judgments and particular analyses”. Leavis thinks of criticism as a cooperative affords, in terms of discussing the text with fellow critics. His method, to catch him is- “This doesn’t it? Bears such a relation to that; this kind of thing- don’t you find it so-whereas better then that etc”.

To reduce his principle to abstract statements would be to take away their precision and make them “clumsy and in adequate”. Leavis wrote that he believes in demonstrating his critical principle, not in staiting them: I do not argue in general terms that there should be no emotion for its own sake, no mere generous emotionality, no luxury in pain and joy, but by choice arrangement and analysis of concrete examples by giving those praises a precision meaning they couldn’t have got in any other way, this is how I try to advance the theory”.

Conclusion:

Yet we can say that in his own way Leavis tries to offer a theory and the assumptions which guide his judgments of poets and novelist are the nearest to a frame work even if they cannot be abstracted into a philosophical theory.