Beyond Culture

Lionel Trilling is undoubtedly one of the most preeminent literary critics in the post-war period, and an archetypal figure of the New York Intellectuals. He is remembered as the "historian of the moral life of modernity," the "philosopher of culture," and the "conscience of intellectual" in the United States. His writings, represented by Matthew Arnold, The Liberal Imagination, The Opposing Self, and Beyond Culture, are now a permanent part of American cultural heritage.Being a son of Jewish immigrants, Lionel Trilling started his apprentice writing with a short story "Impediment," published in a Jewish journal Menorah Journal in 1925 when he was still an undergraduate of English in Columbia University. Until his death in 1975 with an unfinished essay "Why We Read Jane Austen?" he has altogether published seven short stories, one novel, two book-length studies of Matthew Arnold and E. M. Forster, and four collections of essays. Throughout his fifty years critical practice, he has always been illuminating, wise, and flexible, and insisted that mind can matter, and that literature can feed mind and make possible the luxury of the discovery of self. Of course, Lionel Trilling is more than a literary critic, though it is difficult to say what term better describes him. As an educator he was associated with Columbia University for over forty years; as an editor and essayist he was an influential contributor to Partisan Review and the Kenyan Review, as a critic-biographer he placed Matthew Arnold, E. M. Forster. and Sigmund Freud in the liberal-humanist tradition which inspired his own criticism. He examined the influence of philosophy, sociology, history, and psychology on work of art, and logically approached and dissected popular theories, ideals, and culture in his writing. It might be safe to say that he has enlarged the possibilities of literary criticism to accommodate almost any subjects within the framework of culture.As a critical study of Lionel Trilling's literary criticism, the present dissertation concentrates mainly on the four important components of Trilling's critical thoughts, set against the social and intellectual background of his time. To summarize briefly, they are: (1). Literature as a criticism of life; (2). The complexity and pain of living a moral life; (3). The perils of oversimplifying human nature and experience, and the dangers of overweening intellect and will; (4). The problematic but vital relationship between self and society. However, limited information about his personal life is also used whenever necessary to shed light on his work and thoughts.This dissertation is divided into three parts. The first part includes the Introduction and chapter 1 on his association with the New York Intellectuals and his early questioning of "positive Jewishness" and Marxism. When Trilling was still in university, he was deeply involved with literary writing for the school journal and the Jewish intellectual journal. The Menorah Journal aimed at a program to further a secular, humanist, and progressive Jewish consciousness in America, and lessen self-rejection among American Jews by renewing pride in ethnic identity and history. Through writing stories and book reviews, Trilling soon got weary about the simple stereotypes of Jewish problem fiction and gradually withdrew from his search for the "positive Jewishness." He proposed to put the problem of Jewishness in a rich sweep of life, a wider cultural perspective to realize the real transcendence of the dilemma. Like his quest for Jewish identity, Trilling's interest in Marxism and involvement with American Communist activities also did not last long. He and his wife Diana Trilling were all fellow travelers in the thirties, but soon they became disillusioned and turned away from seeing literature as an instrument of class struggle or political propaganda. However Marx's dialectical perspective of history and society exerted deep influence on Trilling's mind.The second part is the core of this dissertation, which includes chapter 2...