F. R. Leavis and T. S. Eliot: Literary criticism, culture and the subject of 'English'

Zhang, Dandan (2018). F. R. Leavis and T. S. Eliot: Literary criticism, culture and the subject of 'English'. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to look into the Leavis-Eliot relationship, connecting it with the broader discourse of English Studies as a university subject that developed in the first half of the twentieth century. It surveys all the many writings of Leavis on Eliot, to see how Eliot is formative for the theory and practice of Leavis’s literary criticism in both positive and negative ways. It conducts a detailed investigation of D. H. Lawrence’s significance in relation to Leavis’s changing attitude to Eliot, and examines how profound differences in social, cultural, religious and national thinking strengthened Leavis’s alliance with Lawrence to the detriment of his relationship with Eliot. These differences are presented as dichotomies between nationalism and Europeanism or internationalism, ruralism or organicism and industrialisation or metropolitanism, and relate to the differences between the two men’s views about literary education, the subject of English and the position of the classics in the curriculum. Leavis’s increasingly conflicted feelings towards a figure to whom he owned an enormous critical debt and inspiration, but whose various beliefs and literary affiliations caused him much misgiving, results in a deep sense of division in Leavis himself which he sought to transfer onto Eliot.

Zhang Dandan, Literary Criticism, Culture and the Subject of 'English': F.R. Leavis and T.S. Eliot, ISBN 9780367360870, Forthcoming September 24 2020, Routledge, https://www.routledge.com/Literary-Criticism-Culture-and-the-Subject-of-English-FR-Leavis-and/Dandan/p/book/9780367360870

Type of Work:	Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)
Award Type:	Doctorates > Ph.D.
Supervisor(s):	Supervisor(s) Email ORCID Ellis, Steve UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED
Licence:
College/Faculty:	Colleges (2008 onwards) > College of Arts & Law
School or Department:	School of English, Drama and American & Canadian Studies, Department of English Literature
Funders:	Other
Other Funders:	China Scholarship Council
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0080 Criticism P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0441 Literary History P Language and Literature > PR English literature
URI:	http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/id/eprint/8408

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