Eliot, Leavis, Lawrence: Nature and Significance of Value-judgement in Literary Criticism
T.S. Eliot’s literary criticism had persisted in maintaining a significantly high profile even after the high tide of British modernist writing had receded and the Derridean initiative had brushed all aside. Yet it would perhaps not be considered too off the mark to suggest that Eliot’s role as a cr...
Kaydedildi:
| Yayımlandı: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ebc, |
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| Yazar: | |
| Materyal Türü: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Dil: | Anglais |
| Baskı/Yayın Bilgisi: |
Études britanniques contemporaines
2020
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| Online Erişim: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Özet: | T.S. Eliot’s literary criticism had persisted in maintaining a significantly high profile even after the high tide of British modernist writing had receded and the Derridean initiative had brushed all aside. Yet it would perhaps not be considered too off the mark to suggest that Eliot’s role as a critic of the novel has not received as much attention. Eliot’s response to D. H. Lawrence, for example, is a case in point.Eliot’s denigration of Lawrence and undervaluing of his achievement as a novelist (‘ . . . he never succeeded in making a work of art’, The Criterion, vol. x), his focus on Lawrence’s ‘sexual morbidity’, and his ‘lack of intelligence’, and the resistance that it provoked from among Lawrence’s supporters, offer fascinating insights into Eliot’s critical practice.More than that, there is also the question of the nature and significance of literary-critical value-judgement. How valid are such value-judgements? Eliot’s rejection of Lawrence, F. R. Leavis’s response to Eliot’s critical judgement, as also Dr. Leavis’s assessment of Eliot’s vision of life as such, the vision that he projects in his verse—these variables offer opportunities to raise interesting questions about critical sensibility and value-judgements. |
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