Macquarie University
Browse

Trilling's second life: the critical return to Lionel Trilling and its application in contemporary fiction

Download (167.67 kB)
thesis
posted on 2022-03-28, 13:10 authored by Eleanor Robin Throsby
This thesis investigates the implications of the recent revival of interest in the ideas of Lionel Trilling. It also explores, through creative practice, how the concepts he espoused might be applied to the writing of fiction today. Trilling's view of literature, culture, morality and their relationship to each other, as expressed in his major critical publications, is evaluated. Reasons for his dominant influence as a literary and cultural critic in the 1940s and 50s are advanced. His fiction is analysed for its relevance to his broader ideas and its value for the creative undertaking that forms part of this thesis. The exegesis reviews the criticism of Trilling's work that began in the 1960s, and the shifting literary and cultural attitudes that led to his marginalisation; it then considers the reasons for the recent return of enthusiasm for Trilling's writings. Aesthetic and moral philosophers began this revival when, like Trilling, they applied the concept of the moral imagination to fiction. The work of literary critics and scholars who have also recently rediscovered Trilling is cited in support of the proposition that his views are once again relevant to literary scholarship and practice. Finally the exegesis argues that Trilling's ideas were not necessarily antithetical to those of the postmodernists and in some respects may have been their precursor. It proposes that Trilling's "second life" brings back into focus values relating to the role of literature that have resonance in the contemporary world and implications for the practice of creative writing. Practice-led research is undertaken in the form of a writer's notebook, which applies, by creative observation and reflection, the ideas investigated in the exegesis.

History

Table of Contents

Introduction -- 1. Trilling the critic -- 2. Trilling the writer of fiction -- 3. Trilling crticised and marginalised -- 4. Trilling resurgent -- Conclusion.

Notes

Theoretical thesis. Bibliography: leaf 68

Awarding Institution

Macquarie University

Degree Type

Thesis MRes

Degree

MRes, Macquarie University, Faculty of Arts, Department of English

Department, Centre or School

Department of English

Year of Award

2015

Principal Supervisor

Jane Messer

Additional Supervisor 1

Rebecca Giggs

Rights

Copyright Eleanor Robin Throsby 2014. Copyright disclaimer: http://mq.edu.au/library/copyright

Language

English

Extent

1 online resource (68 leaves)

Former Identifiers

mq:71373 http://hdl.handle.net/1959.14/1273707

Usage metrics

    Macquarie University Theses

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC