Leavis is often cited as one of the most important and influential literary critics of his time. Fully committed to the belief that literature is an important social and moral force, Leavis argued persuasively that the study of literature should be seen as a vital pursuit. He further asserted that the critical study of literature demands a disciplined expertise. In Leavis's opinion, emotional, biographical, and historical approaches to literary criticism reveal little about a given text. Instead, he felt that literary inquiry requires a scrupulous examination of texts and a "searching critical intelligence."
Great literature is the store-house and preserve of the highest
moral, cultural, ideological and aesthetic values and traditions of
mankind. The really good and serious literature of the present is a
continuation and development of the really good and serious literature of the
past. Therefore really great literature combines the highest moral and
cultural values of the past with those of the present and thus paves the way to
the future. Then comes the function of the critic. The primary
function of the critic is first to disengage the really good and great
literature from the weaker one, and then to analyse the highest and best moral
and cultural values contained in the great literature. His function is to
explain and disseminate those great qualities of literature to the masses.
The critic has to see what is still alive of the literature of the past, and
further to explain the modifications made in it by the present
ideologies. The critic has to judge a work 'as in itself it really
is.' He has not to worry about outside norms, rules or theories of
art. He should be concerned with the work in front of him as
complete in itself. He has to explore, bring out and present the best
thoughts contained in it without considering whether the artist has applied the
established literary rules and theories or not. He has not to take into
consideration any extraneous information. He has not to take into
consideration or give weightage to any established reputation. No matter
if the established reputation of an author is disturbed. The critic has
to remain detached in evaluating a work of literatures infront of him.
Leavis says, "the business of the critic is to perceive for himself, to
make the finest and sharpest relevant discriminations, and to state his
findings as responsibly clearly and forcibly as possible".
Throughout his career, Leavis was partial to writers who
represented a morality characteristic of rural communities prior to the
Industrial Revolution. In the face of what he called the "crisis in modern
culture," Leavis demanded that literature evoke a positive view of life
and promote values he deemed essential to the preservation of a humanistic
culture. Ultimately, Leavis judged a work by the type of moral values it
affirmed. This part of his critical method is extremely vulnerable to
disapproval, particularly because Leavis never offered a fully developed theory
to support his views. Rather, he believed that theorizing and philosophizing
serve only to distract the critic from the primary and difficult task of
evaluation.
Leavis remains a seminal figure in the history of modern
literary criticism. Scrutiny, the renowned literary journal which
Leavis edited, is considered representative of critical writing at its best.
Leavis was also a lecturer in English at Cambridge University for nearly three
decades and, in the words of Eric Bentley, "one of the few people who
welcomed English as a serious university subject, and welcomed it for what it
is, not what you can turn it into or reduce it to."
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Notes
prepared from reading of the text and Internet Sites.
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