Lionel Trilling Summary

Among American critics of the twentieth century, Lionel Trilling was especially illuminating, subtle, and wise. His consummate intelligence, which found its most congenial expression in the poise and ... Read more

Critical Essay by Jacques Barzun [A distinct view of life is discernable in Trilling's works, revealed in the proposition that he] developed and illustrated throughout that galaxy of essays he... Read more

Critical Essay by Denis Donoghue It was common for critics to maintain, during the years in which Trilling wrote his major books, that the relation between the individual artist and society was a rel... Read more

Critical Essay by R. P. Blackmur [We see in Mr. Trilling's The Liberal Imagination] that he cultivates a mind never entirely his own, a mind always deliberately to some extent what he understa... Read more

Critical Essay by Joseph Frank The career and reputation of Lionel Trilling as a literary critic pose something of an anomaly. Not, we should hasten to add, that Mr. Trilling does not deserve all the... Read more

Critical Essay by Geoffrey H. Hartman [For more than 30 years], Lionel Trilling has seen literature as a "criticism of life." The phrase comes from Matthew Arnold, and Trilling rightly ... Read more

Critical Essay by Nathan A. Scott, Jr. Judged against our contemporary standard—which is far less absolute than its "true believers" generally realize—Mr. Trilling'... Read more