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The Common Pursuit
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This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1964
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 10, 2025
I'm currently reading A.S. Byatt, and every time she writes something oddly inhibited and against her radical, imaginative nature, someone points at Leavis, as her teacher, by way of explanation. She at least had some self-awareness of the problems he caused her in her thinking:
"Leavis did to Blackadder 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."
(Byatt, Possession, 1990)
I find early English Literature academic study wildly fascinating, and arguably they needed zealots like Leavis to really convince the powers that be that reading poetry and fiction was a legitimate form of study in itself. Liberal humanism is a kind of self-justifying approach, so of course he's writing with the didactic tone of a preacher. "'Aesthetic' is a term the literary critic would do well to deny himself." Being subjective is a moral failure as far as Leavis is concerned. I'd heard Leavis accused of quoting massive passages from his primary sources, and then never really analysing it, and he definitely does that. He would be flagged by plagiarism software every time. That's the problem with positioning yourself as objective, I suppose - you assume that others holding a different subjective understanding is an error, so why would you need to fully explain your viewpoint? If they're not stupid, they'll reach the same conclusion as you. God, I need to find out if he ever read Barthes.
I don't think it's worth resenting or mocking him, or fretting over his impact, because he's one of a small number of historic critics trying to found a tradition out of nothing; multiple chapters of this book are just discussing what the aim of criticism actually is. He's continually looking back to Enlightenment thinkers to try to find his predecessors, to prove English literature worthy. He really cares about what he's doing, about trying to legitimise a subject which barely existed, but it's such early practice, of course there's a lot lacking, of courde it's restricted and officious and cautious. He's so suspicious of literary Marxism, ie. the first literary theorists, trying to set literature in a full social context (and arguably do more to legitimise the subject than any evaluation of Samuel Johnson). In the chapter 'Literature and Society', based on an address to the SU of the London School of Economics and Politics, he writes probably the single funniest thing he ever said: "the Marxist approach to literature seems to me unprofitable".
"Leavis did to Blackadder 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."
(Byatt, Possession, 1990)
I find early English Literature academic study wildly fascinating, and arguably they needed zealots like Leavis to really convince the powers that be that reading poetry and fiction was a legitimate form of study in itself. Liberal humanism is a kind of self-justifying approach, so of course he's writing with the didactic tone of a preacher. "'Aesthetic' is a term the literary critic would do well to deny himself." Being subjective is a moral failure as far as Leavis is concerned. I'd heard Leavis accused of quoting massive passages from his primary sources, and then never really analysing it, and he definitely does that. He would be flagged by plagiarism software every time. That's the problem with positioning yourself as objective, I suppose - you assume that others holding a different subjective understanding is an error, so why would you need to fully explain your viewpoint? If they're not stupid, they'll reach the same conclusion as you. God, I need to find out if he ever read Barthes.
I don't think it's worth resenting or mocking him, or fretting over his impact, because he's one of a small number of historic critics trying to found a tradition out of nothing; multiple chapters of this book are just discussing what the aim of criticism actually is. He's continually looking back to Enlightenment thinkers to try to find his predecessors, to prove English literature worthy. He really cares about what he's doing, about trying to legitimise a subject which barely existed, but it's such early practice, of course there's a lot lacking, of courde it's restricted and officious and cautious. He's so suspicious of literary Marxism, ie. the first literary theorists, trying to set literature in a full social context (and arguably do more to legitimise the subject than any evaluation of Samuel Johnson). In the chapter 'Literature and Society', based on an address to the SU of the London School of Economics and Politics, he writes probably the single funniest thing he ever said: "the Marxist approach to literature seems to me unprofitable".
July 24, 2024
I wanted to discover why Leavis is unread these days, and that I did - outdated donnish criticism, leavened with occasionally enjoyable bitchiness.
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April 30, 2026F.R. Leavis’s “The Common Pursuit” spends a large number of pages on squabbles with other critics, some of them specialized and esoteric, but his appreciation of Shakespeare, defense of Milton, and celebration of D.H. Lawrence are quite interesting, and although I disagree with his argument against Shelley, it’s refreshing to encounter critic who calls his poetry “repetitive, vaporous, monotonously self-regarding and often emotionally cheap, and so, in no very long run, boring.” No minced words there! Leavis’s prose is often less than graceful, but his views are commendably forthright. Recommended with reservations.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews