A Critical Education - F. R. Leavis and the Modern English Novel

批判性教育——F. R. 利维斯与现代英国小说

• 批准号: 2905979
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Edinburgh
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2024 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2905979
• 关键词: Critical; Education; F.; R.; Leavis

The study of English literature has been subject to increasing scrutiny since the perceived crisis in the discipline in the 1970s. For John Guillory, the existential challenges currently facing literary scholars have amounted to a 'crisis of legitimation', characterized by 'the perennial churn in literary study, the constant revolutionizing of its methods and objects, the agon of its professional identification' ix. Because this sense of disciplinary crisis has been most keenly felt in the decades since the heyday of Cambridge English, it is to that period, and specifically to the legacy of F. R. Leavis and the 'moment of Scrutiny,' as Francis Mulhern calls it, that Guillory, Joseph North and Terry Eagleton, among others, have recently turned to unravel a history that would culminate in the present state of affairs. My research seeks to extend these studies by offering the first account of the reception and diffusion of a revised Leavisian critical paradigm in the pedagogy of new university English schools founded in the 1960s and in the work of contemporary British novelists including Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro and A. S. Byatt.The questions my project seeks to answer are: if Leavisian critical principles were not overturned by the contextualist-historicist models of literary studies that supervened upon them in the 1970s, and elements of Leavis's program were in fact tacitly assimilated into new forms of literary pedagogy, what are the implications of such long-term continuity for our present sense(s) of profession? How may Leavisian conceptualizations of literary value have contributed to the self-styling of some of the highest-profile British novelists of the past fifty years? And finally: how can uncovering these concealed lines of force in the historical development of twentieth-century English studies help us better address the 'crisis' in the discipline at the present time?Like many scholars working in English departments today, British novelists who were also students of literature after mid-century -such as McEwan, Ishiguro and Byatt - are beneficiaries of a twentieth-century theorization of the value of the literary text that developed out of the critical principles and practices of Richards and Leavis, and that would be an enabling condition for the explosion of 'theory' that occurred in the latter decades of the century. Taking my cue from a new wave of critical retrospectives on twentieth-century English studies, I want to seize this moment to scrutinize the activity of novelists who engaged that critical practice, resisted and spoke back to it in the public sphere.

自 20 世纪 70 年代该学科出现危机以来，英国文学研究一直受到越来越多的关注。对于约翰·盖尔利来说，文学学者目前面临的生存挑战已经达到了“合法性危机”，其特点是“文学研究中的常年变动、其方法和对象的不断变革、其专业认同的痛苦”。因为这种纪律危机感在剑桥英语鼎盛时期以来的几十年里最为强烈地感受到，正是在那个时期，特别是 F. R. Leavis 的遗产和弗朗西斯·穆尔赫恩 (Francis Mulhern) 所说的“审查时刻”，盖尔利、约瑟夫·诺斯和特里·伊格尔顿等人最近转向解开一段历史，而这段历史最终导致了目前的事态。我的研究旨在扩展这些研究，首先介绍修订后的利维斯批判范式在 20 世纪 60 年代成立的新大学英语学校的教学法中以及在包括伊恩·麦克尤恩 (Ian McEwan)、石黑一雄 (Kazuo Ishiguro) 和A. S. Byatt：我的项目试图回答的问题是：如果利维斯主义的批判原则没有被文学研究的语境主义-历史主义模式所推翻， 20世纪70年代，利维斯计划的元素实际上被默认地吸收到新形式的文学教育学中，这种长期连续性对我们目前的职业意识意味着什么？利维斯主义的文学价值概念对过去五十年来一些最引人注目的英国小说家的自我塑造有何贡献？最后：揭开20世纪英语研究历史发展中这些隐藏的力量脉络，如何帮助我们更好地解决当前学科的“危机”？就像当今许多在英语系工作的学者一样，麦克尤恩（McEwan）、石黑一雄（Ishiguro）和拜厄特（Byatt）等二十世纪中叶以后的文学学生也是二十世纪文学文本价值理论的受益者，这种理论是从批判原则和实践中发展起来的。理查兹和利维斯，这将成为本世纪后几十年“理论”爆炸的有利条件。受二十世纪英语研究新一波批判性回顾浪潮的启发，我想抓住这个时机，审视小说家们的活动，他们在公共领域从事这种批判实践、抵制和反击。