F. R. Leavis - Reputation

Reputation

Leavis' uncompromising zeal in promoting his views of literature drew mockery from some literary quarters. Leavis (as Simon Lacerous) and Scrutiny (as Thumbscrew) were satirized by Frederick Crews in the chapter Another Book to Cross off your List of his lampoon of literary criticism theory The Pooh Perplex A Student Casebook. In her novel Possession, A. S. Byatt wrote of one of her characters (Blackadder) "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."

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