F. R. Leavis (1895 – 1978)
Highly influential English literary critic and academic, based at Downing College, Cambridge.
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A good deal of Paradise Lost strikes one as being almost as mechanical as bricklaying.
It is well to start by distinguishing the few really great – the major novelists who count in the same way as the major poets, in the sense that they not only change the possibilities of the art for practitioners and readers, but that they are significant in terms of the human awareness they promote; awareness of the possibilities of life.
Not only is he not a genius; he is intellectually as undistinguished as it is possible to be.
He doesn't know what he means, and doesn't know he doesn't know.
The only way to escape misrepresentation is never to commit oneself to any critical judgement that makes an impact – that is, never to say anything. I still, however think that the best way to promote profitable discussion is to be as clear as possible with oneself about what one sees and judges, to try and establish the essential discriminations in the given field of interest, and to state them as clearly as one can (for disagreement, if necessary).
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