biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1905–75)
|
| biography:
| Literary critic, born in New York City, New York , USA. Long associated with Columbia University as a student (BA, MA, PhD) and teacher (1931–75), he was a literary critic of international stature and held guest professorships at various universities in the USA and abroad. A liberal humanist, he equated literary criticism with moral evaluation and cultural criticism. He wrote prolifically on 19th-c and 20th-c writers, publishing important studies of Matthew Arnold (1939) and E M Forster (1943). His collected essays include The Liberal Imagination (1950), Beyond Culture (1965), and Sincerity and Authenticity (1972). His one novel, The Middle of the Journey (1957), was regarded as having been inspired by events in the life of Whittaker Chambers. His wife (married 1929) was the critic Diana Trilling. |
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