Lionel Trilling facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Lionel Trilling
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| Born |
Lionel Mordechai Trilling
July 4, 1905 Queens, New York, United States
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| Died | November 5, 1975 (aged 70) New York City, United States
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| Alma mater | Columbia University |
| Occupation | Literary critic, professor |
| Years active | 1931–1975 |
| Employer | Columbia University |
| Known for | Literary criticism |
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Notable work
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The Liberal Imagination (1950) |
| Spouse(s) |
Diana Trilling
(m. 1929) |
| Children | James Trilling |
Lionel Mordecai Trilling (born July 4, 1905 – died November 5, 1975) was an American literary critic, short story writer, essayist, and teacher. He was one of the most important critics in the United States during the 20th century. He studied how literature connected with culture, society, and politics. With his wife, Diana Trilling, he was part of a group called the New York Intellectuals. He also wrote for a magazine called Partisan Review.
Contents
Life and Education
Lionel Mordecai Trilling was born in Queens, New York. His mother, Fannie, was from London, and his father, David, was a tailor from Bialystok, Poland. His family was Jewish.
Early Life and College
In 1921, Trilling finished DeWitt Clinton High School. At age 16, he started attending Columbia University. This began his long connection with the university. He wrote for the Morningside literary journal. In 1925, he earned his degree from Columbia College. The next year, he got his Master of Arts degree from the university. He then taught at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and at Hunter College.
Marriage and Columbia Career
In 1929, he married Diana Rubin. They worked together on many literary projects throughout their lives. In 1932, Trilling returned to Columbia to get his doctorate in English literature and to teach. He earned his doctorate in 1938 with a paper about the writer Matthew Arnold. He later published this paper as a book.
The next year, he became an assistant professor. He was the first Jewish professor to get a permanent teaching position in Columbia's English department. In 1948, he became a full professor.
Teaching and Honors
Trilling became a special professor of literature and criticism in 1965. He was a very popular teacher. For 30 years, he taught a course at Columbia called "Colloquium on Important Books." This course explored how literature and cultural history were connected. He taught it with Jacques Barzun.
Many of his students became famous writers and thinkers. These included Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Susan Sontag. In 1969, he was a visiting professor at Harvard University. In 1972, he received the first Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities. This is a very high honor from the U.S. government for achievements in the humanities.
Partisan Review and New York Intellectuals
In 1937, Trilling joined the magazine Partisan Review. This magazine was started in 1934. It focused on ideas about society and politics, especially from a Marxist viewpoint, but it was against Stalinism.
The New York Intellectuals Group
The Partisan Review was linked to a group called the New York Intellectuals. This group included Trilling, his wife Diana, and many other important thinkers like Hannah Arendt and Saul Bellow. They believed that history and culture greatly influenced authors and literature. This group was different from another group called the New Critics.
In his book Beyond Culture (1965), Trilling explained that the New York Intellectuals were very active with ideas. He said they had a strong influence on other groups in society.
Books and Writings
Trilling wrote one novel called The Middle of the Journey (1947). It was about a wealthy couple who meet someone who has left the Communist party. He also wrote short stories, like "The Other Margaret."
Mostly, Trilling wrote essays and reviews. In these, he explored how literature could challenge common ideas about right and wrong in society. Critic David Daiches said that Trilling liked to think about how each piece of literature connected to culture and civilization.
Major Works
Trilling published two detailed studies about authors: Matthew Arnold (1939) and E. M. Forster (1943). His first collection of essays, The Liberal Imagination, came out in 1950. Other essay collections included The Opposing Self (1955), which looked at how people define themselves against cultural influences.
In Sincerity and Authenticity (1972), he explored ideas about the moral self in Western civilization after the Enlightenment. He also wrote introductions for other important books, like The Selected Letters of John Keats (1951) and George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia (1952).
Unfinished Novel
In 2008, an unfinished novel by Trilling was published after it was found among his papers. The novel, The Journey Abandoned: The Unfinished Novel, is set in the 1930s. It is about a young main character, Vincent Hammell, who wants to write a book about an older poet. The poet's character was loosely based on the 19th-century poet Walter Savage Landor.
Political Views
People have debated Trilling's political views, which were quite complex. He often wanted to remind people who called themselves liberals that liberalism meant valuing each person's unique, complex, and sometimes difficult existence.
Trilling believed that "ideology" was not deep thought. Instead, it was a habit of showing respect for certain ideas that people felt emotionally tied to, even if they didn't fully understand them.
Politically, Trilling was known as a member of the anti-Stalinist left. He held this view throughout his life.
Liberal Ideas
In his earlier years, Trilling wrote within the liberal tradition. He clearly rejected conservatism. In the introduction to his 1950 essay The Liberal Imagination, he wrote:
In the United States at this time Liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition. For it is the plain fact that nowadays there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation. This does not mean, of course, that there is no impulse to conservatism or to reaction. Such impulses are certainly very strong, perhaps even stronger than most of us know. But the conservative impulse and the reactionary impulse do not, with some isolated and some ecclesiastical exceptions, express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.
Neoconservative Debates
Some people, both conservatives and liberals, argue that Trilling's views became more conservative over time. Some neoconservatives have seen him as sympathetic to their ideas. However, Trilling himself criticized the New Left (just as he had criticized the Old Left) but did not become a neoconservative.
His wife, Diana Trilling, stated that neoconservatives were wrong to think he shared their views. She said in her memoir that nothing in his thoughts supported the strict ideas of neoconservatism. Whether Trilling can be linked to neoconservatism is still a topic of debate.
Moderate Stance
Trilling has also been described as a moderate thinker. The title of his novel, The Middle of the Journey, suggests this. A key passage from the novel also shows this idea:
An absolute freedom from responsibility – that much of a child none of us can be. An absolute responsibility – that much of a divine or metaphysical essence none of us is.
When someone once told him, "You have no position; you are always in between," Trilling replied, "Between is the only honest place to be."
Works by Trilling
Fiction
- The Middle of the Journey (1947)
- Of This Time, Of That Place, and Other Stories (1979) (Selected by Diana Trilling and published after his death.)
- The Journey Abandoned: The Unfinished Novel (2008) (Published after his death.)
Non-fiction and essays
- Matthew Arnold (1939) (Based on Trilling's Ph.D. thesis.)
- E. M. Forster (1943)
- The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society (1950)
- The Opposing Self: Nine Essays in Literary Criticism (1955)
- Freud and the Crisis of Our Culture (1955)
- A Gathering of Fugitives (1956)
- Beyond Culture: Essays on Literature and Learning (1965)
- Sincerity and Authenticity (1972) (A collection of lectures given at Harvard in 1969.)
- Mind in the Modern World: The 1972 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities (1973)
- The Last Decade: Essays and Reviews, 1965–75 (1979) (Published after his death.)
- Speaking of Literature and Society (1980) (Published after his death.)
- The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays (2000) (Published after his death.)
- Adam Kirsch, ed. (2018). Life in Culture: Selected Letters of Lionel Trilling. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. ISBN: 9780374185152. (Published after his death.)
Introductions and Commentaries
- Introduction to Jane Austen, Emma. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1957. (Riverside edition of Jane Austen's 1815 novel)
- Introduction to Tess Slesinger, The Unpossessed. New York: Avon Books. 1966. (Reprint of Tess Slesinger's 1934 novel.)
- Introduction to James, Henry, The Princess Casamassima. New York, The Macmillan Company. 1948
See also
In Spanish: Lionel Trilling para niños
