Page 142 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Literary Criticism and Theories

Notes emotional and intellectual force, contained behind a serene and genial manner, that explains
Trilling's popularity with students and his remarkable influence, through generations of
students and readers, in the English departments of universities across the country and, to a
lesser degree, in England.
• I have no room to discuss Trilling's deep involvement with the writings of Sigmund Freud,
whom he admired enormously for his forceful recognition of the dark side of life and for his
courage in discovering and telling unpalatable truths. However, the essay included here by
the psychotherapist Bruno Bettelheim offers a superb account of the interaction of Trilling,
psychoanalysis, and literature. Nor do I have room to explore Trilling's ambivalent feelings
about teaching the great modern writers -- D. H. Lawrence and Franz Kafka, Yeats and Eliot,
Joyce and Proust, Mann and Conrad -- all of whom he believed offered an adversarial,
indeed a subversive, attitude toward the basic tenets of liberal democracy. Trilling asked his
students to look into the abyss of terrors and mysteries gaping before them in this literature
and found them passively interested, displaying neither wonder nor fear. Was the effect of
teaching such works, under the respectable auspices of a university course, simply to legitimize
and define the subversive?

12.6 Key-Words

1. Lack : Lack is located in the fact of desire being founded on a primordial absence yet being
committed to a necessarily futile quest for what is lacking.
2. Desire : Desire is the gap between the demand for love and the appetite for satisfaction.

12.7 Review Questions

1. What is the relationship between Freud and literature according to Trilling?
2. What is Lionel Trilling trying to say when he states. It is new life and not art that requires the
willing suspension of disbelief.
3. Explain Psychoanalysis theories of Freud.
4. Discuss the role of Ramean in Trilling’s essay.
Answers: Self-Assessment
1. (i)(a) (ii)(a) (iii)(c) (iv)(b)

12.8 Further Readings

1. Hutcheon, Linda A poetics of postmodernism, London: Routledge, 1988.
2. Kennedy, X.J., Dana Gioia, Mark Bauerlein, Handbook of Literary Terms:
Literature, Language, Theory, 1st edition, New Delhi: Pearson, 2007.
3. Lodge, David (ed.) Twentieth Century Literary Criticism, London: Longman,
1972.
4. Rice, Philip and Patricia Waugh (eds.) A Modern Literary Theory: A Reader, 3rd
edition, London: Arnold, 1999.
5. Sethuraman, V.S. and Ramaswamy (eds.) The English Critical Tradition, Volume
II, New Delhi, Macmillan, 1977.
6. Seturaman, V.S. (ed.) Contemporary Criticism: An Anthology, New Delhi:
Macmillan, 2008.

136 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY