Re-reading Leavis

Macmillan Press

1996

324 p.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 285-301) and index.

9780312164195

Contents: Cover; Contents; List of Abbreviations; Introduction; Acknowledgements; 1 'MASS CIVILISATION AND MINORITY CULTURE'; Definitions and Standards; 'Signals', Standards and Standardisation; Metaphor: the Gold Standard, 'Race' Consciousness; The Economics of Excess; Culture, Metaphor and Metonymy; Advertising and Book Clubs; The Work of Repetition in 'Mass Civilisation and Minority Culture'; Leavis Reading and the Use of 'America'; The Obvious, Desire and Footnotes; Reading Culture Twice; 2 CULTURE AND ENVIRONMENT; Leisure and Consumerism; Work and Leisure; Literature, Literary Criticism and the Wheelwright's CraftConsciousness, Modernity and Tradition; Leavis Reading Sturt; Culture, Leisure and Substitution; Leavis, Lacan and Value; Culture, Consciousness, Civilisation and the Body; Literature, Advertising, Science and Speech; Connection, Example, Quotation; Gender and Bliss; 3 LITERATURE AND SOCIETY; Leavis and Marxism; Scientific Management and the Organic Community; Leavis, Lefebvre and Marxism; Criticism, Scientific Management and Professionalism; The Problem of Cultural Autonomy; The Body of the 1930s; Modernity: Disembodiment and Desire; Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Leavisian Criticism and the ContractLiterature and Society; Leavis and Bateson; Restraint, Excess, Metaphor and 'Life'; Negation and the Body; The Body in Pieces; Leavisian Criticism and Consumersim; Public and Private; Freud, Leavis and Judgement; Reading and the Nature of Criticism; 4 THE 'THIRD REALM'; The 'Double' Existence of the Poem; The 'Third Realm' and Différance; Negative Dialects and the 'Third Realm'; Adorno and Leavis; Leavis and Wittgenstein; Boundaries and the Space of Reading; Surveying the Body; Tradition and Advertising; Terms and Transcendence; Reading by the BodyLeavis, Derrida and 'Force'; The Problem of Intention and the 'Third Realm'; Leavis, Lacan and 'Recognition'; Meaning and Significance; Leavis and Adorno; Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

This book offers a much needed reassessment of F.R. Leavis. Gary Day argues that post-structuralist theory has defined itself in opposition to Leavis when in fact there are certain parallels between the two types of criticism. Day also draws attention to the connections between Leavis's early work and the emergent discourses of consumerism and scientific management. In particular he notes how at the centre of each is an image of the body and he analyses what this means for Leavis's conception of reading. By situating Leavis in relation to the concerns of post-structuralism and by locating him firmly in his historical context, Day is able to chart how far criticism can justly claim to be oppositional. At the same time, Day is able to recuperate from Leavis's work a notion of value; a topic which is becoming increasingly important in literary and cultural studies today.

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