Mass Civilisation and Minority Culture: the work of

F.R.Leavis
F.R.Leavis was one of the most influential figures in English twentieth century literary

criticism. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to state that 'English' as a modern university subject

was shaped largely by Leavis's example, his writings, and their influence on successive

generations of teachers and students. As a lecturer at Cambridge University, Leavis set out,

through works such as Mass Civilisation and Minority Culture (1930) and New Bearings in

English Poetry (1932), to transform English Studies from a secondary subject, considered far

less important than the classics, into a discipline of trained critical awareness and high moral

vocation. From T.S.Eliot he took the notion of 'tradition' as the idea of a selective canon of

texts whose qualities could only be perceived and preserved through the exercise of an highly

developed critical intelligence. From the literary critic and linguist I.A.Richards he derived

certain crucial ideas about the importance of "the training of sensibility", to ensure that such

texts could be analysed in detail, and appropriate value-judgements made on them. It is also

possible that Leavis derived his belief in the importance of poetry, as the principal means to

implement this training, from William Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930). In a

sense, therefore, Leavis had nothing especially original to say - except, perhaps, his absolute

and unshakeable belief in the importance of English Literature as a discipline of thought. On

the other hand, it may be argued that this was also Leavis's major contribution; somehow his

conviction moved out beyond its base in the Cambridge Faculty of English, to define what

amounted to a whole new discourse on and around the subject of English Studies.

Even now, some twenty years after his death, Leavis's work appears to be widely read. In

a 1992 survey, published in the Times Higher Education Supplement, he was ranked the

second most popular critic in British polytechnic [now university] and college English

courses after Roland Barthes1. A webpage exists, devoted to American students'

interpretations of Leavis's The Great Tradition, concentrating in particular on Austen,

Conrad, Eliot and James (www.english.udel.edu/teague/Leavis.html). In Commonwealth

countries in particular - India, South Africa, and former African colonies - his ideas have

influenced the teaching of literature in schools and universities (Bradbrook 1984: 37). It is

also my contention that, even though no direct influence can be traced (he seldom visited

other countries apart from America),2 Leavis has helped to determine the pedagogic tradition

of English Studies in the Turkish Republic. I want to demonstrate this by focusing on his

major preoccupations - the belief in tradition, the necessity for close reading of a literary text

(especially a poem) - and the overriding concern for the importance of English Literature.

Through extracts from recent essays and interviews, I will subsequently show how such

preoccupations are as important for colleagues working in Turkish departments of English

Literature, as they were for Leavis himself. Leavis's work has been perceived as part of a

moral tradition of criticism, extending back through Arnold to Pope and Sidney, which has

proved especially significant for anyone concerned with developing Turco-centric approaches

to studying and teaching English Literature.

Leavis himself was well aware of the importance of keeping traditions alive. In the

pamphlet Mass Civilisation and Minority Culture (1930), he expressed concern at the

"desperate plight of culture to-day"; a culture dominated by mass-production, the popular

press, media and film (Leavis 1948: 143). Any belief in the "continuities" of society, more

precisely defined as "the delicate traditional adjustments, the mature, inherited codes of habit

and valuation" had been sacrificed in pursuit of "the cheapest emotional appeals, appeals the

more insidious because they are associated with a compellingly vivid illusion of actual life"

(Leavis 1948: 146, 149). It was vitally necessary to recover "the implicit standards that

order the finer living of an age, the sense that this is worth more than that, this rather than that

is the direction in which to go, that the centre is here rather than there" (Leavis 1948: 144-5)
- something which could only be accomplished through "long-term intercourse with the best

models" of the past (Leavis 1948: 157).

For Leavis, tradition was not something dead and buried; at its best, it provided certain

standards of thought and behaviour which could be used to determine the future. This notion

was outlined in Culture and Environment, a teaching primer written in collaboration with

Denys Thompson, and published in 1933. Leavis cited the example of George Sturt's The

Wheelwright's Shop, which outlined a pre-industrial world in which people were treated "as

self-respecting individuals .... besides their hands their brains, imagination, conscience, sense

of beauty and fitness - their personalities - were engaged [in their work]". Most people lived

for their work, and their use of leisure was shaped accordingly. This contrasted starkly with

the modern industrial world of mass-production, which treated men "as a factor necessary to

production as 'power' and 'capital' are, and on the same level" (Leavis 1933: 75). As a result,

the traditions of recreation have died with the old ways of work from which
they were inseparable. Men are now incapacitated by their work, which
makes leisure necessary as it was not before, from using their leisure for
humane recreation, that is, in pursuits that make them feel self-fulfilled and
make life significant, dignified and satisfying. (Leavis 1933: 69)

This was clearly evident, for instance, in people's preference for "reading newspapers or

going to the cinema or turning on the loudspeaker or the gramophone", rather than talking to

one another - at work or at rest, in the public-house, at market, by the wayside and at the

cottage door (Leavis 1933: 71). Whilst Leavis realised that pre-industrial communities

could not be resurrected in the industrial era, he nonetheless advocated the restoration of "the

continuity of consciousness", which kept pre-industrial traditions alive, "for the memory of

the old order must be the chief incitement towards a new, if ever we are to have one"

(Leavis 1933: 96). This he believed could be accomplished through the study of great

authors from the past, such as Shakespeare, Donne, Conrad or D.H.Lawrence.

 Two points need to be made at this juncture. Firstly, it is clear that many of Leavis's

observations about industrial society were derived from Matthew Arnold, whose work was

"informed by a mature and delicate sense of the humane values and can manifest itself

directly as a fine sensibility" (Leavis 1982: 57). Secondly, Leavis's belief in the literary

tradition - and the authors who shaped that tradition, including Arnold - was tempered by the

knowledge that such traditions had to be continually reshaped, in order for a "continuity of

consciousness" to be preserved. This was most evident in the work of T.S.Eliot which, in

spite of its "seeming disjointedness" and its "wealth of literary borrowings and allusions",

nonetheless reflected "the present state of civilisation. The traditions and cultures have

mingled, and the historical imagination makes the past contemporary" (Leavis 1960: 91).

Clearly Leavis's veneration for the pre-industrial community could be challenged, on the

grounds that it was nostalgic, sentimental, and patently unrealistic. It is the case for every

speaking subject that immediacy, spontaneity and direct presence are necessarily deflected by

the universalising, classificatory force of language. Alienation of the kind attributed to

modern civilisation by Leavis is inescapable in every human culture there has ever been

(Easthope, 1999: 172). Nonetheless, his belief in the potential of literary texts to provide

solutions to the problems of contemporary civilisation continues to exert a powerful

influence, nearly seventy years after Mass Civilisation and Minority Culture first appeared.

Bülent Bozkurt, professor of English at Bilkent University, recently remarked that state

university departments of English Literature should, "by declaration and tradition … have

acknowledged unequivocally the lasting and universal importance of English - or perhaps

'British' Literature as a scholarly and intellectual discipline, regardless of its market value at a

given period" (Bozkurt 1998: 6). Note the use of language here: literature is something that

should be independent of "market value", on account of its "lasting and universal importance"

(I will return to its "scholarly and intellectual" aspects later on). Oya Menteşe observed that
literary texts can provide answers to "many of the [present-day] questions … on gender, on

ethnicity, on identity. Perhaps literary texts can answer these questions even better on

occasions than popular cultural texts" (Menteşe 1999: 7). I would suggest that this has been

achieved through a two-fold process of demonstrating how literary texts sustain a "continuity

of consciousness" between the present and the past, and by reshaping literary traditions in the

interests of Turkish civilisation. In Mass Civilisation and Minority Culture Leavis called for

the creation of "implicit standards that order the finer living of an age"; in Turkish terms,

such standards have been created by educating successive generations of English Literature

graduates who not only possess excellent language skills, but who "are much more

understanding, much more tolerant, and open to new ideas. In general, they do not like

violence" (Doğramacı 1999: 15).

At this point, I must reiterate that I am not trying to prove that Leavis has directly

influenced the outlook of English departments in Turkey. 3 My purpose is merely to show

how an understanding of his work helps to explain why many of our colleagues believe that

English Literature is a serious subject of study. This can be further demonstrated by

considering his approach to literary criticism, which was founded on what he termed the

"training of sensibility"4

Everything must start from the training of sensibility … It should, by

continual insistence and varied exercise in analysis, be enforced that
literature is made of words, and that everything worth saying in criticism of
verse and prose can be related to judgments concerning particular
arrangements of words on the page. (Leavis 1948: 120)

Through this process, students could formulate "intelligent and sensitive judgments in the

concrete", and acquire "real understanding", which "can't be a mere theoretical matter" but

entails "real critical engagement in relation to the contemporary scene" (Leavis 1969: 46).

Such engagement should be based on the perception of literature's greatness, which "is

realized to be that because it so decidedly modifies - alters - the sense of value and
significance that judges. That is what is testified to in the commonplace that a great artist

creates the taste by which he is appreciated" (Leavis 1969: 50).

Although Leavis adopted an anti-theoretical stance towards literary criticism, this did not

mean to say that he favoured mere fact-gathering - an activity which, in his view, also

inhibited "real understanding" of a text. A student with "sensibility" should be able to

understand the meanings of words that were already adequately constituted by the writer in

the words on a page. Some of the most important words Leavis believed were "incapable of

definition … You can't by defining them fix and circumscribe their life - for in any vital use

they will live, even disconcertingly; there lies their importance for thought" (Leavis 1972:

163). The "life" of such words enabled students to grasp the relationship between the

universal and the particular; how words and the traditions they embody are reshaped in

particular contexts, so that the universal civilizing force of great literature may be

appreciated.

Such an approach, Leavis believed, would validate literary criticism as "a discipline of

intelligence, with its own field, and its own approaches within that field" (Leavis 1969: 45).

More significantly, it might serve to create a new generation of "intelligent and cultivated

persons … enough to be a potential influence of great value" to society (Leavis 1969: 57).

This did not mean that Leavis supported the dominant literary élite; for him, the term

"élitism" was "a product of ignorance, prejudice and unintelligence", used by the

"progressivist intelligentsia" to deny the possibility of the emergence of a true élite - i.e. those

whose professional training in literary criticism entitled them to pass judgement on society.

It was this continuing "ignorance" which led to the collapse of standards in modern

civilisation (Leavis 1972: 169-70).5

Of course there are any number of objections to this position. Who decides whether those

who have acquired "sensibility", can pronounce judgement on others? What about those
who are unable to study in an English department? And is it really the case that the health of

society depends upon a just appreciation of literature? These criticisms, however, have a

reflex air about them, for they do not really attempt to engage with what Leavis was trying to

prove. His basic notion was that there exists a connection between language (as studied in

literary texts) and life, a proposition that can hardly be denied. He also claimed that great

literature promotes a deeper awareness of life - whether past, present or future - than does, for

example, popular journalism, television or film. Consequently literary criticism had a

specifically moral purpose, helping to maintain a vital and living connection between

tradition, language and lived experience.

Several Turkish colleagues have expressed similar enthusiasm for a literary education.

Emel Doğramacı has stressed how "students become much more open to the world as a result

of literature and language; it enriches their life and their experiences of life" (Doğramacı

1999: 15). Perhaps it was this belief which encouraged many English departments to reject a

philology-based curriculum (based on language teaching, with only limited opportunities for

studying literature) in favour of literature in the 1960s and 1970s. The move was certainly

popular, as "people started to demand that their children be educated in these departments, so

that they could not only learn English, but find out more about English Literature too"

(Doğramacı 1999: 15). As indicated earlier on in this paper, English Literature departments

are still committed to maintaining "scholarly and intellectual" standards of critical practice,

by investigating material that "says something about fundamental human issues and which is

permanent in the sense that it transcends both time and culture". Compared to other texts -

newspapers, or films - literature provides a "much more refined" means for students to learn

how to "express themselves more effectively" in English, as well as acquiring "sensitivity to

language and intuitive awareness". Such skills should give them the potential to make a

major contribution to the development of Turkish society (İçöz 1998: 14-15).

 Following the example set by I.A.Richards and William Empson 6, Leavis was an

unashamed advocate of the study of poetry. His groundbreaking study of New Bearings in

English Poetry (1932) explains why:

Poetry matters because of the kind of poet who is more alive than other
people, more alive in his own age. He is, as it were, at the most conscious
point of the race in his time. The potentialities of human experience in any
age are realized only by a tiny minority, and the important poet is important
because he belongs to this (and has also, the power of communication) ….
He is a poet because his interest in his experience is not separable from his
interest in words; because, that is, of his habit of seeking by the evocative
use of words to sharpen his awareness of his ways of feeling, so making
these communicable (Leavis 1960: 13).

Through their "evocative use of words", poetry provides the ideal means for aspiring literary

critics to acquire the kind of sensibility which enables them to make informed and intelligent

judgements. Although Leavis subsequently expanded his critical focus to include novels and

plays, his belief in poetry's unique qualities remained constant. Towards the end of his

academic career, he described Eliot's Four Quartets as "musical", in the sense that

the ordering … is essential to the thought that dictates or engenders it …. In

the thought, which demands intellectual attention in the sense that the duly
responding reader can't but know that he is thinking, the evoked responses
of sensibility, imagination and value-judgment play obviously indispensable
parts (Leavis 1975: 56).

By contrast, the selection of texts in Turkish academic curricula has been far more

extensive, including poetry, drama, novels and critical theory. Any work can be studied, so

long as it communicates (in Matthew Arnold's phrase) "the best that has been thought and

said in the world" (qtd. in Menteşe 1998: 86). To ensure that students understand the

significance of what they are reading - especially when faced with something as complex and

allusion-laden as Four Quartets - lecturers frequently participate in what Leavis once termed

"collaborative exchanges", which serve "to explicate what has been said … There is this

danger that the language of these texts may put people off: group work may help to facilitate

the process of understanding" (Umunç 1999: 7).7

 To understand why such similarities exist between Leavis's views and those expressed by

Turkish colleagues, it is important to understand how Turkish departments of English have

been shaped by English traditions. Engin Uzmen recalled that the final three years of the

four-year undergraduate programme at Ankara University in the 1940s and 50s

"corresponded to the usual English Department system in England" (Uzmen 1998: 44). It

contained poetry, novel and drama courses, as well as an introduction to literary criticism,

which took the form of an historical survey from the Elizabethan period to modern times, and

included selections from the work of Sidney, Dryden, Addison and Steele, Johnson, and

Coleridge. This course remains an important component of most undergraduate English

Literature curricula, although its focus has been expanded to include modernist and

postmodernist critics. Two of the most popular critics, whose work is regularly included

on such courses (chiefly because it has been included in the Norton Anthology of English

Literature) are Alexander Pope and Matthew Arnold, who were both concerned with the

contribution made by literature and literary criticism to the health of society. Pope advises

aspiring critics to respect their profession: "'tis not enough taste, judgement, learning, join;/ In

all you speak, let truth and candour shine" (Essay on Criticism Part 5, 560-1), while Arnold

observes that critics should "know the best that is known and thought in the world, and in

turn by making this known, to create a current of true and fresh ideas" (The Function of

Criticism at the Present Time (1864-5)). Such views on criticism and its social function have

been especially important in Turkish departments of English Literature, which have

endeavoured to contribute to the development of the national culture by providing courses of

study that combine the best social, economic, and academic practices from the west with

local expertise. The noted translator, academic and former Minister of Culture Talât Halman

has summarised this policy in a recent interview:

We must adopt a series of practical and original values and methodologies,

using the best and most advanced ideas from the west and elsewhere. That
 can mean European, American, or British ideas - whatever sources prove
the most useful. We have to create a synthesis of such ideas with our own
methodologies to study our own culture, as well to form new independent
opinions of foreign cultures (Halman 2000: 1).

By taking courses in the history of literary criticism, students are not only exposed to what

is perceived as the best of western thinking (Pope, Arnold, Leavis), but should also learn how

to develop that knowledge for the benefit of Turkish society.

This requires students and academics alike to question the validity of what they are

reading. Both Arnold and Leavis were specifically concerned with the health of English

society - Leavis in particular hoped that England, the country of "Shakespeare, Dickens,

Lawrence and Blake", should not become "just a province of the American world". He was

not anti-American; rather he endeavoured to resist the gradual trend towards mass education,

something he considered symptomatic of "essential Americanization - under which they

themselves [the Americans] wilt" (Leavis 1972: 159). For many Turkish academics, the

"problem" of Americanization does not exist: courses in American Literature and Culture

were incorporated into English departmental curricula as early as the 1950s, while many of

the fledgling departments of American Culture and Literature, which were established during

the 1970s and 80s, were staffed by English Literature graduates. 8 This is not to say that

Arnold's and Leavis's "Englishness" should be ignored; but their work can also be viewed

through the universalist paradigm - something that, as Max Weber once said, is characteristic

of a western (but not specifically English) way of thinking: "In Western civilisation, and in

western civilisation only, cultural phenomena have appeared which (as we like to think) lie in

a line of development having universal significance and value". 9 Ever since its creation over

seventy years ago, the Turkish Republic has been committed to developing itself along

western lines; this is what renders critics such as Arnold and Leavis "relevant" to English

Literature students in Turkey. The point has been well expressed by Emel Doğramacı:
"[Criticism] can … contribute to students' development as human beings, understanding the

ways in which people behave and react in given situations, as well as being made aware of

the social and economic conditions of a western country …. People say that we are simply

serving a propagandist purpose; but still I say that our goals and missions should not change"

(Doğramacı 1999: 15). To achieve such goals, English Departments in Turkey place

particular importance on the social mission of English criticism, as expressed by Leavis and

his predecessors.

What is clearly evident here is a concern to maintain a Leavisian "continuity of

consciousness" between past and present. By reinterpreting English critical texts written

over four centuries (from Sidney to Leavis), today's Turkish students and academics should

become aware of their importance for their own civilisation.

From a British perspective, such concerns may seem representative of an approach to

literary criticism which achieved popularity during the middle of the last century, but which

has now been superseded by other approaches. When Leavis's biography was published in

1995, one reviewer observed how his concern for literary criticism, as a way of maintaining

standards in society, might be greeted with "grim mirth", by most departments of English in

Britain, which have "been no more able to resist the industrialization of academic life than

any others":

As a result, they veer bizarrely between a remorseless drive towards

abstraction - no damn nonsense about sensibility here! - and the need to
explain to Honours students that Milton came before Shelley, or that they
should not refer in their essays to Keat's poetry and Dicken's novels
(Jacobson 1995: 18)

More significantly, critics such as Christopher Norris have sought to deconstruct Leavis's

pedagogical enterprise, to reveal that "those who reproach literary theory … are merely

stating their fear at having their own ideological mystifications exposed by the tool they are

trying to discredit. They are, in short, very poor readers of Marx's German Ideology" (Norris
1988: xiv). By demystifying Leavis, one can perceive the partisan or value-laden character

of his writing; how it excluded certain texts by suggesting that certain writers did not deserve

to be included in the canon of "great literature" - even if they had been considered important

during their lifetime. This kind of judgement not only applied to non-literary texts - such as

newspapers or popular fiction - but to writers such as Milton, Shelley or Virginia Woolf. It

is not surprising, therefore, that some of Leavis's detractors perceive him as being motivated

as much by academic self-interest as by a genuine concern for the future of English literature

(Hawtree 1995: 17)10.

If such is the case, then we might be prompted to ask why Leavis, in common with other

critics who have formed part of the social mission of literary criticism, retains his importance

in Turkish departments of English Literature. One explanation has already been suggested in

the opening paragraphs of this paper - despite the new developments in critical and cultural

theory, Leavis remains a popular subject for study in schools and universities all over the

world. In the Turkish context, undergraduates still take introductory courses in the history of

English criticism, focusing on Arnold, Pope and Sidney (and Leavis, to a lesser extent),

which serve as a basis for the study of contemporary critical approaches.

The purpose of such courses, according to Himmet Umunç, is practical, helping students

to "find out more about how to use a particular theory in the study of literature. They will

engage in more applied criticism, and not simply reproduce previously-learned literary

theories" (Umunç 1999: 2). On the one hand, the methodology Umunç proposes is one that

contradicts everything that Leavis ever stood for: the student's task is no longer to discover

the writer's intention, but to appreciate that a text "assumes a new identity and a new meaning

each time it is read by individual readers". Their focus of attention should not be restricted to

literary texts, for "literature in a sense is no longer … canonised, but part of an

interdisciplinary movement that encompasses cultural studies, linguistics, and other

intellectual pursuits" (Umunç 1999: 3). On the other hand, the objective of these courses is

one that Leavis might have certainly sympathized with; to create a new generation of

critically informed graduates, who could not only teach such courses (if they chose to remain

in academe), but who could produce "a volume of critical writings in Turkish for the Turkish

audience. In Turkey this is something that's really needed: many people - writers, editors,

literary journalists - are unfamiliar with such theories, and we aim to produce something - an

anthology - for them". In time, maybe the Turkish Republic could produce "a Kristeva or an

Eagleton" of its own (Umunç 1999: 3-4). Implicit in Umunç's recommendations is a belief

in critical standards, which, if maintained, will guarantee the future development of Turkish

civilisation.

What is clearly apparent here is that, far from rejecting the literary tradition represented by

Arnold, Leavis and others, many Turkish colleagues have redefined it, so that it can

accommodate courses in contemporary theory. By doing so, they have endeavoured to

preserve the "continuity of consciousness" that extends across time and space - exposing

students to the best western literary theorists, both past and present, in an attempt to develop

their cross-cultural and/or critical sensibilities.

Throughout this paper, I have suggested that, whereas Leavis himself may appear "a

bizarre, antiquated, moralistic figure, whose neglect is sad, but unsurprising" to a journalist

writing in The Daily Telegraph ("Paperbacks", 1997), his work remains important in many

literature departments. Despite the fact that many of his critics portray him as élitist, or

reactionary in his views, Leavis himself adopted a pragmatic perspective. Literature, and

literary traditions were undoubtedly important, but they had to be continually reinvented in

order to survive. If this task could be accomplished collaboratively, involving students and

lecturers in an English department, then so much the better. Of course, if one were to move

outside the English department, we might need to explore other issues raised by Leavis's
work: how the so-called "continuity of consciousness" can survive in a consumer society

encouraging egotism and competition; how, in a society of the perpetual present, Leavis's

respect for history and tradition may be observed; and how, Leavis's demand for attentiveness

and sustained concentration can be applied in a society of instant gratification. But such

questions are beyond the scope of this paper. What I have tried to show is that Leavis, in

common with several Turkish colleagues, upholds a notion of value depending on openness,

responsiveness and 'significance'. Any literary text should not be studied simply to confirm

one's ideas, thoughts and values, but should provide a focus for self-questioning and practical

debate. This creates the possibility for individuals to move beyond their limited 'phrase

regimes' or cultural cul de sacs, and make a distinctive contribution to the development of

civilisation. Such ideas, as recent Leavis criticism has shown, are easy to caricature but

difficult to comprehend.

WORKS CITED

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Bozkurt, Bülent R. (1998), "The future of English Departments in Private and State Universities", Journal of
English Literature and British Culture 7: 3-7.

Bradbrook, M.C. (1984), "Nor shall my sword? The Leavises' mythology", in Denys Thompson (ed.), The
Leavises: Recollections and Interpretations, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press): 29-38.

Bradbrook, M.C. (1973), "I.A.Richards at Cambridge" in Reuben Brower, Helen Vendler, John Hollander (eds.),
I.A.Richards: Essays in his honor, (New York, Oxford University Press): 61-73.
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Easthope, Antony (1999), Englishness and National Culture, (London, Routledge).

Halman, Talat Sait (2000), interview with Laurence Raw, 14th March.

Hawtree, Christopher (1995), "Criticism and Feuds", Times Educational Supplement, 28 July: 17.

Içöz, Nursel (1998), "English Literature and English Language Teaching", Journal of English Literature and
British Culture 7: 11-17.

Jacobson, Dan (1995), "A reader for life", Times Literary Supplement, 4 August: 3.

Leavis, F.R. (1982), "Arnold as Critic", repr. in Singh, G. (ed.), The Critic as Anti-Philosopher, (London, Chatto
and Windus): 53-64 (orig. pub. in Scrutiny Vol VII (1939)).

Leavis, F.R. and Thompson, Denys (1933), Culture and Environment: The training of critical awareness,
(London, Chatto and Windus)

Leavis, F.R. (1948), Education and the University, new edn., (London, Chatto and Windus).

Leavis, F.R. (1969), English Literature in Our Time and in the University, (London, Chatto and Windus).

Leavis, F.R. (1948), "How to Teach Reading" (1932) repr. in Education and the University: 105-41.

Leavis, F.R. (1974), "In defence of Scrutiny", letter to the London Magazine (March 1955) repr. in John Tasker
(ed.), F.R.Leavis: Letters in Criticism, (London, Chatto and Windus, 1974): 44-51.

Leavis, F.R. (1948), "Mass Civilisation and Minority Culture", repr. in Education and the University, new edn.
(London, Chatto and Windus, 1948): 143-71.

Leavis, F.R. (1960), New Bearings in English Poetry, (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press) (orig. edn.
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Pluralism, Compassion and Social Hope, (London, Chatto and Windus): 161-99.

Leavis, F.R. (1975), "Thought, Language and Objectivity", in The Living Principle: English as a discipline of
thought, (London, Chatto and Windus): 19-69.

McKillop, Ian (1995), F.R.Leavis: a life in criticism, (London: Allen Lane)

Menteşe, Oya Batum (1998), "The experience of British Cultural Studies in Turkey", Journal for the Study of
British Cultures: 85-93.

Menteşe, Oya Batum (1999), "People and Places", interview with Laurence Raw, British Council Newsletter: 7-
8.

Norris, Christopher (1988), "Editor's Preface" to Michael Bell, F.R.Leavis: a biography, (London, Routledge
and Kegan Paul): vii-xv.

"Paperbacks" (1997), "F.R.Leavis, A Life in Criticism", The Daily Telegraph, 12th April.

Umunç, Himmet (1999), Interview with Laurence Raw, British Council Newsletter, January: 7-8.

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1
Antithesis: Critical Mass" (1992): 2.
2
According to Leavis's biographer Ian MacKillop, Leavis made occasional visits to countries like Finland as a British
Council guest lecturer. However, Leavis's relations with the Council were often stormy: after the Second World War, he was
especially critical of them for failing to distribute copies of his journal Scrutiny (MacKillop, 1995: 224-5)
3
Several Turkish academics in the 1950s and 60s were sent to Cambridge University on government-sponsored
scholarships, to complete their graduate work in English Literature - notably İrfan Şahinbaş of Ankara University, Berna
Moran from Istanbul University, and Cevat Çapan from Mimar Sinan University. So far I have discovered that their only
direct exposure to Leavis's ideas came through attending his lectures. Nonetheless, it is significant that there are copies of
The Great Tradition in most of the major university libraries - suggesting, perhaps, that faculty members have been keen to
expose their students to Leavis's ideas.
4
Many of Leavis's ideas were derived from the work of I.A.Richards, a near-contemporary at Cambridge University, who
was much involved in the transformation of the English Literature course from an adjunct of the Medieval and Modern
Languages Tripos into an independent Honours course. Through his two major works - Principles of Literary Criticism
(1924), and Practical Criticism: a study of Literary Judgement five years later - Richards stressed the importance of the
reader's response. The analysis of literature became a collaborative social exercise, with students and teachers evaluating
their reactions to a given text. As a student of both Richards and (latterly) Leavis, M.C.Bradbrook recalled that "the best of
our work was done by direct contact …. We were not much concerned with the outside world or with publicity - we learnt
by the direct method of 'oral transmission'" (Bradbrook 1973: 63).
5
Leavis's disputes with members of this so-called "progressivist intelligentsia" - reviewers, fellow-academics,
representatives of the BBC and the British Council - have been analysed by Garry Watson in The Leavises, the "social" and
the left, (Swansea, The Brynmill Publishing Company Ltd., 1977) - an unashamedly partisan work which seeks to vindicate
Leavis's views. See also F.R.Leavis, Letters in Criticism, ed. and intro. John Tasker, (London, Chatto and Windus, 1974):
many of the (adverse) reviews of this volume are discussed by Watson.
For more on Leavis's concern with critical standards, see F.R.Leavis, "Towards Standards of Criticism" in Anna Karenina
and Other Essays, (London, Chatto and Windus, 1967): 221-34.
6
see I.A.Richards, Science and Poetry, (London, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd., 1926), esp. pp. 7-27; and
William Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity, (London, The Hogarth Press, 1991) (orig. edn. 1930), pp. 234-56.
7
cf Leavis's observation in English Literature in our time and the University: "The function of criticism demands a fully
overt kind of collaboration. Without a many-sided real exchange - the implicitly and essentially collaborative interplay by
which the object, the poem (for example) in which the individual minds meet, and, at the same time, the judgements
concerning it, are established, the object, which we think of as 'there', in a public world for common contemplation, isn't
really 'there' (Leavis 1969: 47-8).
8
For a fuller discussion of the growth of American Literature departments in Turkey, see Necla Aytür, interview with Ayşe
Lahur Kıırtunç, Journal of American Studies of Turkey 3 (1996), website address
http://www.bilkent.edu.tr/~jast/Number3/Kirtunc.html; and Gönül Pultar, "The Imagined Community of American Studies
in a Non-Christian, Non- "Western" Environment: American Studies Scholarship in Turkey", American Studies
International 27,2 (June 1999), 12-14.
9
For more on this, see my "Reconstructing Englishness", accessible on website www.britcoun.org/studies.
10
Leavis was once described by one of his former pupils, Morris Shapira, as "a self-dramatising poseur who saw himself as
the hero of a coup de théâtre" (qtd. in Hawtree 1995: 17).