Bangladesh MA.English Student: FR.Leavis: Literature and Society
FR.Leavis: Literature and Society Two or three years back, or at any time in the Marxizing decade, having been invited to discourse on 'Literature and Society' , I should have known what was expected of me- and what to expect. I should have been expected to discuss, or to give opportunities for discussing, the duty of the writer to identify himself with the working-class, the duty of the critic to evaluate works of literature in terms of the degree in which they seemed calculated to further ( or otherwise) the proper and pre-destined outcome of the class- struggle, and the duty of the literary historian to explain literary history as the reflection of changing economic and material realities (the third adjective, 'social', which I almost added here, would be otiose). i should have been braced for such challenges as the proposition that D.H. Lawrence, though he was unquestionably aware of and tried to describe the outside forces that were undermi