Talk:F. R. Leavis

Biography assessment rating comment
The article may be improved by following the WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article. -- KenWalker | Talk 04:28, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

This entry needs rewriting from a NPOV. In places it reads more like a hagiography than an objective treatment of its subject. Leavis set himself up as a cultural enforcer, a sorter of the sheep from the goats, a Witchfinder General of lit. crit. Unfortunately for him, his grasp did not match his reach and, except to a cadre of disciples (known as Leavisites), he became to the greater literary world little more than a figure of fun. Leavis (as Simon Lacerous) and "Scrutiny" (as "Thumbscrew") were satirized by Frederick C. Crews in the chapter "Another Book to Cross off your List" of his amusing lampoon of lit. crit. theory "The Pooh Perplex A Student Casebook" (Barker, London, 1963, ISBN 0213171988).

The following paragraph was attributed to me (Gina L. Serman Reid). I did not write it, nor do I know who wrote it. Will the actual writer kindly take credit or remove the comment? Gina L. Serman Reid (talk) 08:05, 1 June 2012 (UTC) A.S. Byatt lampooned F.R. Leavis in her novel "Possession": "Leavis did to Blackadder [a fictional character of Byatt's] 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." ("Possession", First International Vintage Edition, October 1991, Copyright 1990 by A.S. Byatt, pg. 32, 2nd para.)


 * Have corrected one or two of the most egregious hagiographical bits. Straw Cat (talk) 12:11, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

The reverse of the above is the case. I have started to make factual corrections but the article needs to be re-written as a whole. For example, Leavis's Readership and his Fellowship of Downing were not 'terminated'; his Readership came to an end in the natural course of an academic career when he reached retirement age (67) in 1962. In that year he became an honorary Fellow of Downing but resigned this position in 1964 as a result of a disagreement with the College over his succession. As another reader has suggested, there is no direct evidence that Leavis's health was affected by exposure to gas in the First War although his experiences as a stretcher-bearer and nursing orderly may well have contributed to his post-war insomnia. Richard Stotesbury's useful article is quoted as if it settled the question as to whether Leavis's later thinking can be described as 'philosophical', but it plainly does not. Ian Robinson has contributed helpfully to that discussion, as has Michael Bell in later work than that cited. Certainly some parts of his later works are highly original. Extraordinarily, the most complete source of information that we currently have, Ian MacKillop's F. R. Leavis: a Life in Criticism (1995) is not cited. The significance of Leavis's twelve years at the University of York is not brought out (indeed, the introduction states wrongly that Leavis spent almost his entire life teaching and studying at Downing), a significance brought out at the 2010 Leavis conference there. Leavis's reputation is surely by any standards very great (which doesn't necessarily entail concurring with him on individual judgments or even about his general approach) and it is surely not acceptable in any kind of scholarly article to confine this section to a few (arguably ill-informed) 'lampoons'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.132.248.86 (talk) 10:03, 26 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree with the above unsigned comment that more about his work at the University of York would be valuable: also a report of his activities during the second world war. Xxanthippe (talk) 07:30, 22 June 2014 (UTC).

Edit war?
2 edit IP spa 92.26.39.235 has twice removed a section of the article without explanation. Please discuss here according to the WP:BRD cycle. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:46, 11 October 2013 (UTC).

Citation style
What is the meaning of the numbers in the citations, such as (Bell 3)? The non-standard style is distracting, but I cannot see how cleanup should be done without understanding the existing style. - Crosbie 14:39, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I would imagine "Bell 3" means page 3 of Michael Bell's book listed in the References section. These don't appear to be chapter numbers becaues one (Bilan 115) is such a high number. I agree, the citation style is inconsistent and distracting. I 've harmonized it. (pinging the editor responsible for the first citation style: . – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 00:41, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Character and reputation
I forgot to log in, but I've deleted a bunch of POV material critical of Leavis. I'm not a great fan (I came looking for material on his role in The Two Cultures debate, where he was criticised by nearly everyone. But a collection of hostile gossip could be made about just about anyone in the literary world, and is not encyclopedic. Rather it is both WP:POV and, in the absence of a secondary source showing that the views presented are representative, also vioaltes WP:OR. JQ (talk) 02:09, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

Peacock??
is it a peacock-statement that Leavis was an influeantial literary critic that should be removed? The Banner talk 07:35, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Per WP:PEACOCK, yes. —Wash whites separately (talk) 11:08, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I am inclined to think that Leavis can be described as influential, although perhaps not in the way implied here. I have restored to the article a section that was removed wholesale by another editor. It shows that Leavis was influential in exciting the obloquy of many creative writers of his time, ranging from T S Eliot to Stephen Fry. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:29, 16 October 2016 (UTC).
 * Would controversial be a better word than influential? Xxanthippe (talk) 01:22, 16 October 2016 (UTC).
 * It may be reasonable to explain that Leavis was influential, but simply adding the word "influential" is a bad way of doing this. Stating that someone was "influential" is, by itself, vague and unhelpful. It would be quite possible to explain specifically how Leavis was influential, even without using the specific term. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 22:50, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

Second world war
I have been trying to expand the article to cover Leavis' activities during the second world war but have mostly drawn a blank. By 1942, when conscription was introduced for males in the UK under 51 years of age, Leavis was 47 and therefore eligible for military service. MacKillop (1997) indicates that during the Second World War Leavis continued to teach at Cambridge. None of the biographers comment on the circumstances of this. Was he a conscientious objector as he had been in the first world war when he was required to perform para-medical duties, was he in a reserved occupation, did he contribute to the war effort by serving in the Non-Combatant Corps or in the Home Guard (United Kingdom) or in some other capacity, as members of his cohort did at Bletchley Park for instance? Can editors help? Xxanthippe (talk) 02:48, 17 December 2017 (UTC).

Moral seriousness of D H Lawrence
Leavis has written much about D H Lawrence, attributing to him what he calls moral seriousness. Bertrand Russell, who is viewed as having had one of the keenest minds of his era, corresponded with Lawrence and knew him personally to the extent that Lawrence once asked him to leave him money in his Will (it seems that Russell declined to oblige). Russell rejected Laurence's mystical notions of blood consciousness, and thought that they had led straight to Auschwitz. In 1953 Russell, recalling his relationship with Lawrence in the First World War, characterised Lawrence as a proto-German Fascist, saying I was a firm believer in democracy, whereas he had developed the whole philosophy of Fascism before the politicians had thought of it. The critic Terry Eagleton endorsed Russell's view. Other writers accused Lawrence of sadism, racism, misogyny, sexism, advocating male supremacy and of being a pornographic sadist. Do editors see an incongruence of these latter views with the moral seriousness that Leavis attributes to Lawrence? Should the issue mentioned in the article? Xxanthippe (talk) 00:59, 14 April 2018 (UTC).