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F(rank) R(aymond) Leavis |
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F. R. Leavis is widely considered the most important literary critic of the twentieth century. He is identified with the consolidation of English as a university subject and with the production of an influential map of the English literary tradition in both poetry and the novel. In the wake of subsequent debates about the "canon" and intensive refinements of the technique of "close reading," Leavis's literary judgments may now seem somewhat sweeping and impressionistic, but he must nevertheless be seen as one of the key architects of the methodological focus of literary studies, because of his promotion of a concern with "the words on the page." He also contributed to a fraught, ongoing debate over the social function of "English," making an impassioned and controversial plea for its cultural importance and mounting a lifelong campaign for a recognition of its capacity to provide an independent realm for reflection on human values in a disorienting modern environment.
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