Page 134 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Literary Criticism and Theories Digvijay Pandya, Lovely Professional University

Notes Unit 12: Freud and Literature—Lionel Trilling:
Critical Appreciation

CONTENTS
Objectives
Introduction
12.1 Text—Freud and Literature: Critical Appreciation
12.2 Plot and Major Characters
12.3 Major Themes
12.4 Critical Appreciation
12.5 Summary
12.6 Key-words
12.7 Review Questions
12.8 Further Readings

Objectives
After reading this Unit students will be able to:
• Understand Trilling’s view on Freud and Literature.
• Discuss Plot and major characters of Freud and Literature.

Introduction

Recognized as one of the foremost American literary critics of the twentieth century, Trilling also
wrote several short stories that were published in periodicals during his lifetime. In 1979, four
years after his death, five of his best stories were collected and published as Of This Time, Of That
Place and Other Stories. Reviewers praised the stories as complex tales that explore characteristic
thematic concerns of Trilling's fictional and nonfictional work. Although Of This Time, Of That
Place and Other Stories has garnered little critical attention, commentators have commended the
volume as a notable and underrated work.
Trilling’s first book played a crucial role in drawing international attention to his intellectual gifts
and marking him as, in Rodden's phrase, "a rising star." The extreme, almost unanimous praise for
his 1939 biography of Matthew Arnold, the dominant figure in English criticism in the late
nineteenth century, surprised everyone, including Trilling himself. One of England's leading men
of letters, the novelist, critic, and editor John Middleton Murry, opened his review on a mock note
of hurt national pride.
Mr. Trilling, who is an American professor, has written the best -- the most comprehensive and
critical — book on Matthew Arnold that exists. It is a little saddening to us that this particular
glory should fall to the United States. Another British reviewer called the book "the most brilliant
piece of biographical criticism issued in English during the last ten years."
But it was the review by Edmund Wilson that pleased Trilling most. Wilson was at the time
indisputably America's leading critic, regarded by Trilling as a model for joining literary, political,
and social commentary with an enviable lucidity of style. At one point Trilling had become
despondent about writing on a subject so remote from the Great Depression and the impending
war. Wilson, then only a casual acquaintance, urged him to finish the book, insisting that the
subject was a worthy one. On its publication Wilson, notoriously not given to easy praise, called
it "one of the first critical studies of any solidity or scope by an American of his generation."

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