Lionel Trilling as a Literary Critic

The Works of Lionel Trilling: Uniform Edition. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: Toronto: Academic Press Canada. 1978-1980. The Liberal Imagination : Essays on Literature and Society ( 1950). 284 + xiv pp. The Opposing Self: Nine Essays in Criticism. (1955).204 + xpp. Beyond Culture: Essays on Literature and Learning ( 1965). 204 + xiv pp. Sincerity and Authenticity ( 1972). 174 pp. The Last Decade : Essays and Reviews. 1965-J975. ed. Diana Trilling ( 1979). 241 pp. Speaking of Literature and Society. ed. Diana trilling (1980). 429 + xii pp. Lionel Trilling died in 1975 at the age of seventy. Since then, in a remarkable act of serious trade publishing that bespeaks Trilling's pre-eminence in the United States as a critic of literature, society and culture, his publishers have brought out a uniform edition of his collected works. The existence of these twelve handsome volumes provides an opportunity to survey Trilling's canon, assess strengths and limitations, note major tendencies, and identify appropriate criteria for gauging his critical achievement. My survey will, however, be restricted to Trilling's principal works of literary criticism and will consider only half of the volumes in the Uniform Edition. I shall not mention his one novel, The Middle of the Journey (1947) nor the volume of collected shorter fiction. Trilling's first book, the celebrated Matthew Arnold (1939), is not discussed because it is basically an intellectual biography, not a work of literary criticism. Because my space is limited I make no mention of the 1943 critical study of E.M. Forster. And I have excluded A Gathering of Fugitives and Prefaces to the Experience of Literature on the grounds that these two collections of critical pieces are comparatively minor and peripheral

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• Hemingway

  Bradford A Booth, Carlos Baker•American Literature•1953

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• Lionel Trilling

  Walter Sutton, William M Chace•American Literature•1981

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