Tag: Culture

Topics

Books

Matthew Arnold

– New York: Norton, 1939.
A study of the work and thought of Matthew Arnold

E.M. Forster

– New York: New Directions, 1943.
Summary: “A concise critical study of Forster’s personality, short stories, and novels”

The Moral Critic

– Kristol, Irving. "The Moral Critic." Review of E.M. Forster, by Lionel Trilling. Enquiry, April 1944. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves, edited by John Rodden (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999).
Excerpts: [I]n that very same article Mr. Trilling incorporated two distinct chidings. He was angry with the Left for having surrendered its traditional moral vision, and at the same time… More

The Middle of the Journey

– New York: Viking, 1947.
Published in 1947, as the cold war was heating up, Lionel Trilling’s only novel was a prophetic reckoning with the bitter ideological disputes that were to come to a head in the McCarthy… More

Reality in America

– "Reality in America." Part 1 published in Partisan Review, January-February 1940. Part 2 published in The Nation, April 20, 1946.
Parrington was not a great mind; he was not a precise thinker or, except when measured by the low eminences that were about him, an impressive one. Separate Parrington from his informing… More

The Princess Casamassima

– "The Princess Casamassima," Introduction to The Princess Casamassima by Henry James. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1948.
Excerpt: In 1888, on the second of January, which in any year is likely to be a sad day, Henry James wrote to his friend William Dean Howells that his reputation had been dreadfully injured… More

The Immortality Ode

– "The Immortality Ode." Paper read before the English Institute, September 1941. First published in The English Institute Annual, 1941. New York: Columbia University Press, 1942.
Excerpt: Criticism, we know, must always be concerned with the poem itself. But a poem does not always exist only in itself; sometimes it has a very lively existence in its false or partial… More

Manners, Morals, and the Novel

– "Manners, Morals, and the Novel." Paper read at the Conference on the Heritage of the English-Speaking Peoples and Their Responsibilities, at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, September 1947. First published in The Kenyon Review 10, No. 1 (Winter 1948): 11-27.
Excerpt: The invitation that was made to me to address you this evening was couched in somewhat uncertain terms. Time, place and cordiality were perfectly clear, but when it came to the… More

The Kinsey Report

– "The Kinsey Report." Partisan Review, April 1948.
Excerpt: By virtue of its intrinsic nature and also because of its dramatic reception, the Kinsey Report, as it has come to be called, is an event of great importance in our culture. It is… More

The Opposing Self: Nine Essays in Criticism

– New York: Viking, 1955.
Summary: “Analytical studies trace the development theme of the individual in selected novels, letters, and poems from the end of the eighteenth century to the present.”  … More

The Situation of the American Intellectual at the Present Time

– Originally published as Trilling's contribution to "Our Country and Our Culture: A Symposium." Partisan Review 19, no. 3 (May 1952): 318-26.
Excerpt (from the essay as published in The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent): The editors of Partisan Review have long been thought to give a rather special credence and sympathy to the… More

Two Notes on David Riesman

– Originally published in two parts. Part 1: “A Change of Direction,” The Griffin 1, no. 3 (1952); Part 2: “American Portrait,” The Griffin 3, no. 5 (1954).

“That Smile of Parmenides Made Me Think”

– " 'That Smile of Parmenides Made Me Think.' " The Griffin 5, no. 2 (February 1956). Also published as "The Smile of Parmenides: George Santayana in his Letters" in Encounter, December 1956: 30-37.
Excerpt: One doesn’t have to read very far in Santayana s letters to become aware that it might be very hard to like this man–that, indeed, it might be remarkably easy to dislike him.… More

Emma and the Legend of Jane Austen

– First published as the introduction to Emma by Jane Austen, Riverside Edition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1957). Also published in Encounter 8, no. 6 (June 1957).

The Fate of Pleasure

– “The Fate of Pleasure.” Partisan Review, Summer 1963.
Excerpt: Of all critical essays in the English language, there is none that has established itself so firmly in our minds as Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads. Indeed, certain of… More

Freud: Within and Beyond Culture

– “Freud: Within and Beyond Culture.” First delivered as “Freud and the Crisis of our Culture” for the Freud Anniversary Lecture in the New York Psychoanalytical Society and the New York Psychoanalytical Institute, May 1955. Subsequently published as Freud and the Crisis of our Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955).
Excerpt: And in the degree that society was personalized by the concept of culture, the individual was seen to be far more deeply implicated in society than ever before. This is not an idea… More

The Leavis-Snow Controversy

– First published as “A Comment on the Leavis-Snow Controversy.” Commentary, June 1955.
Excerpt: It is now nearly eighty years since Matthew Arnold came to America on his famous lecture tour. Of his repertory of three lectures, none was calculated to give unqualified pleasure… More

Beyond Culture: Essays on Literature and Learning

– New York: Viking, 1965.
Summary: “In essays on education, literature, and psychoanalysis, Trilling addresses himself to the assumptions made by those who define themselves in terms of their relation to the… More

Sincerity and Authenticity

– The Carles Eliot Norton Lectures, 1969-1970. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972.
Summary: “Now and then,” writes Lionel Triling “it is possible to observe the moral life in process of revising itself.” In this new book he is concerned with such a… More

Art, Politics, and Will: Essays in Honor of Lionel Trilling

– Anderson, Quentin, Stephen Donadio, and Steven Marcus, eds. Art, Politics, and Will: Essays in Honor of Lionel Trilling. New York: Basic Books, 1977.
Art, Politics, and Will was originally conceived as a Festschrift for Trilling. However, he passed away before the book could be published, and it was converted into a memorial volume. The… More

Mind in the Modern World

– "Mind in the Modern World." The first Thomas Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Spring 1972. Then published in the Times Literary Supplement, Nov. 17, 1972, 1381-1385. Subsequently published as a small book by New York: The Viking Press, 1973.
Excerpt: In 1946, in the last year of his life, H. G. Wells published a little book which is surely one of the saddest and possibly one of the most portentous documents of our century. Much… More

Speaking of Literature and Society

– Trilling, Diana, ed. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980.
Summary: “Diana Trilling selected pieces from her husband’s previously uncollected writings covering the wide range of Trilling’s concerns from his undergraduate days… More

The Promise of Realism

– "The Promise of Realism." Review of Bottom Dogs, by Edward Dahlberg, with an introduction by D.H. Lawrence (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1930); Pay Day, by Nathan Asch (New York: Brewer and Warren, 1930); and Frankie and Johnnie, by Meyer Levin (New York: John Day, 1930). Menorah Journal 18 (May 1930): 480-84.

The America of John Dos Passos

– "The America of John Dos Passos." Review of U.S.A., by John Dos Passos (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1937). Partisan Review 4 (April 1938): 26-32.
Excerpt: U.S.A. is far more impressive than even its three impressive parts—The 42nd Parallel, 1919, The Big Money—might have led one to expect. It stands as the important American… More

Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves

– Rodden, John, ed. Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.
Collection of essays by prominent critics on Trilling’s career; includes many of the most important essays on Trilling’s work published during his lifetime.

The Last Great Critic

– Glick, Nathan. “The Last Great Critic.” The Atlantic, July 2000.
Excerpt: I CANNOT close this review without noting two contributions by the editor. John Rodden’s introductory survey of the contents of this collection is richly but casually… More

Night Vision

– Delbanco, Andrew. “Night Vision.” Review of The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent: Selected Essays, by Lionel Trilling, edited with an introduction by Leon Wieseltier (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000). New York Review of Books, January 11, 2001.
Excerpt: Trilling’s real distinctiveness, I think, is that he was at heart a teacher. He carried into his writing the classroom principle that stating any proposition without at least a… More

Introduction to The Middle of the Journey

– Engel, Monroe. Introduction to The Middle of the Journey, by Lionel Trilling, v-xi. New York: New York Review of Books, 2002.
Excerpt: In its own forceful way, very unlike either Faulkner or Hemingway, The Middle of the Journey too is “at work upon the recalcitrant stuff of life.” This is… More

The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays

– Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2008. Original edition: New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2000.
Summary: Bringing together the thoughts of one of American literature’s sharpest cultural critics, this compendium will open the eyes of a whole new audience to the work of Lionel… More

Introduction to The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays

– Wieseltier, Leon. Introduction to The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays, ix-xvi. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2008.
Excerpt: Trilling emphatically believed that “the problems of Life” must indeed be brought before the mind, thought not for the purpose of eliciting anything so simple and so… More

Regrets Only: Lionel Trilling and His Discontents

– Menand, Louis. "Regrets Only: Lionel Trilling and his discontents." New Yorker, September 29, 2008.
Excerpt: Most people who picked up the book in 1950 would have understood it as an attack on the dogmatism and philistinism of the fellow-travelling left, but the term “liberal” is… More

Underrated: Lionel Trilling

– Himmelfarb, Gertrude. “Underrated: Lionel Trilling.” Standpoint, April 2009.
Excerpt: When Lionel Trilling died in 1975, he was not only the most eminent literary critic in America, but also, some would argue, the most eminent intellectual figure. Three years before… More

Why Trilling Matters

– Kirsch, Adam. Why Trilling Matters. New Haven : Yale University Press, 2011.

Lionel Trilling and the Social Imagination

– Beran, Michael Knox. “Lionel Trilling and the Social Imagination.” City Journal, Winter 2011.
Excerpt: Trilling’s hostility to the social imagination is nowhere more evident than in the fourth essay in The Liberal Imagination, a meditation on Henry James’s 1886 novel The… More

Does Lionel Trilling Matter?

– Massie, Allan. “Does Lionel Trilling Matter?” Review of Why Trilling Matters, by Adam Kirsch (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011). Times Literary Supplement, February 1, 2012.
Excerpt: In setting out to demonstrate that Trilling still matters, Kirsch is asserting the value of literature and a literary culture. If Trilling thought and wrote, frequently, about the… More

No Mean City

– “No Mean City.” Review of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs (New York: Random House, 1961). Mid-Century 37 (March 1962): 14-19.

What a Piece of Work is Man

– “What a Piece of Work is Man.” Review of Claude Lévi-Strauss: A World on the Wane, translated by John Russell (New York: Criterion, 1961). Mid-Century 38 (April 1962): 5-12.

Uncle Matthew

– Wilson, Edmund. "Uncle Matthew." Review of Matthew Arnold, by Lionel Trilling. The New Republic, March 1939. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 
Excerpt: But if Mr. Trilling has followed this fashion it is evidently not due to lack of competence. His observations on Arnold’s style are admirably phrased as well as just: “The… More

Beyond Liberalism

– Spender, Stephen. "Beyond Liberalism." Commentary, August 1950. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 
Excerpt: Mr. Trilling thinks the liberal imagination defective, and it is scarcely too much to say that his book might well be entitled “The Liberal Lack of Imagination.” What it… More

Liberalism, History, and Mr. Trilling

– Howe, Irving. "Liberalism, History, and Mr. Trilling." The Nation. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 
Excerpt: Lionel Trilling’s new book of essays, “The Liberal Imagination,” (Viking, $3.50), has as its central purpose a criticism of the liberal mind “as it drifts… More

Beyond Liberalism

– Williams, Raymond. "Beyond Liberalism." The Manchester Guardian," April 1966. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 
Excerpt: I had been puzzled for many years to know the source of a particular North Atlantic definition and structure of “the modern.” I had met it repeatedly, at my end of the… More

Essays

Matthew Arnold

– New York: Norton, 1939.
A study of the work and thought of Matthew Arnold

E.M. Forster

– New York: New Directions, 1943.
Summary: “A concise critical study of Forster’s personality, short stories, and novels”

The Moral Critic

– Kristol, Irving. "The Moral Critic." Review of E.M. Forster, by Lionel Trilling. Enquiry, April 1944. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves, edited by John Rodden (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999).
Excerpts: [I]n that very same article Mr. Trilling incorporated two distinct chidings. He was angry with the Left for having surrendered its traditional moral vision, and at the same time… More

The Middle of the Journey

– New York: Viking, 1947.
Published in 1947, as the cold war was heating up, Lionel Trilling’s only novel was a prophetic reckoning with the bitter ideological disputes that were to come to a head in the McCarthy… More

Reality in America

– "Reality in America." Part 1 published in Partisan Review, January-February 1940. Part 2 published in The Nation, April 20, 1946.
Parrington was not a great mind; he was not a precise thinker or, except when measured by the low eminences that were about him, an impressive one. Separate Parrington from his informing… More

The Princess Casamassima

– "The Princess Casamassima," Introduction to The Princess Casamassima by Henry James. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1948.
Excerpt: In 1888, on the second of January, which in any year is likely to be a sad day, Henry James wrote to his friend William Dean Howells that his reputation had been dreadfully injured… More

The Immortality Ode

– "The Immortality Ode." Paper read before the English Institute, September 1941. First published in The English Institute Annual, 1941. New York: Columbia University Press, 1942.
Excerpt: Criticism, we know, must always be concerned with the poem itself. But a poem does not always exist only in itself; sometimes it has a very lively existence in its false or partial… More

Manners, Morals, and the Novel

– "Manners, Morals, and the Novel." Paper read at the Conference on the Heritage of the English-Speaking Peoples and Their Responsibilities, at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, September 1947. First published in The Kenyon Review 10, No. 1 (Winter 1948): 11-27.
Excerpt: The invitation that was made to me to address you this evening was couched in somewhat uncertain terms. Time, place and cordiality were perfectly clear, but when it came to the… More

The Kinsey Report

– "The Kinsey Report." Partisan Review, April 1948.
Excerpt: By virtue of its intrinsic nature and also because of its dramatic reception, the Kinsey Report, as it has come to be called, is an event of great importance in our culture. It is… More

The Opposing Self: Nine Essays in Criticism

– New York: Viking, 1955.
Summary: “Analytical studies trace the development theme of the individual in selected novels, letters, and poems from the end of the eighteenth century to the present.”  … More

The Situation of the American Intellectual at the Present Time

– Originally published as Trilling's contribution to "Our Country and Our Culture: A Symposium." Partisan Review 19, no. 3 (May 1952): 318-26.
Excerpt (from the essay as published in The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent): The editors of Partisan Review have long been thought to give a rather special credence and sympathy to the… More

Two Notes on David Riesman

– Originally published in two parts. Part 1: “A Change of Direction,” The Griffin 1, no. 3 (1952); Part 2: “American Portrait,” The Griffin 3, no. 5 (1954).

“That Smile of Parmenides Made Me Think”

– " 'That Smile of Parmenides Made Me Think.' " The Griffin 5, no. 2 (February 1956). Also published as "The Smile of Parmenides: George Santayana in his Letters" in Encounter, December 1956: 30-37.
Excerpt: One doesn’t have to read very far in Santayana s letters to become aware that it might be very hard to like this man–that, indeed, it might be remarkably easy to dislike him.… More

Emma and the Legend of Jane Austen

– First published as the introduction to Emma by Jane Austen, Riverside Edition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1957). Also published in Encounter 8, no. 6 (June 1957).

The Fate of Pleasure

– “The Fate of Pleasure.” Partisan Review, Summer 1963.
Excerpt: Of all critical essays in the English language, there is none that has established itself so firmly in our minds as Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads. Indeed, certain of… More

Freud: Within and Beyond Culture

– “Freud: Within and Beyond Culture.” First delivered as “Freud and the Crisis of our Culture” for the Freud Anniversary Lecture in the New York Psychoanalytical Society and the New York Psychoanalytical Institute, May 1955. Subsequently published as Freud and the Crisis of our Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955).
Excerpt: And in the degree that society was personalized by the concept of culture, the individual was seen to be far more deeply implicated in society than ever before. This is not an idea… More

The Leavis-Snow Controversy

– First published as “A Comment on the Leavis-Snow Controversy.” Commentary, June 1955.
Excerpt: It is now nearly eighty years since Matthew Arnold came to America on his famous lecture tour. Of his repertory of three lectures, none was calculated to give unqualified pleasure… More

Beyond Culture: Essays on Literature and Learning

– New York: Viking, 1965.
Summary: “In essays on education, literature, and psychoanalysis, Trilling addresses himself to the assumptions made by those who define themselves in terms of their relation to the… More

Sincerity and Authenticity

– The Carles Eliot Norton Lectures, 1969-1970. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972.
Summary: “Now and then,” writes Lionel Triling “it is possible to observe the moral life in process of revising itself.” In this new book he is concerned with such a… More

Art, Politics, and Will: Essays in Honor of Lionel Trilling

– Anderson, Quentin, Stephen Donadio, and Steven Marcus, eds. Art, Politics, and Will: Essays in Honor of Lionel Trilling. New York: Basic Books, 1977.
Art, Politics, and Will was originally conceived as a Festschrift for Trilling. However, he passed away before the book could be published, and it was converted into a memorial volume. The… More

Mind in the Modern World

– "Mind in the Modern World." The first Thomas Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Spring 1972. Then published in the Times Literary Supplement, Nov. 17, 1972, 1381-1385. Subsequently published as a small book by New York: The Viking Press, 1973.
Excerpt: In 1946, in the last year of his life, H. G. Wells published a little book which is surely one of the saddest and possibly one of the most portentous documents of our century. Much… More

Speaking of Literature and Society

– Trilling, Diana, ed. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980.
Summary: “Diana Trilling selected pieces from her husband’s previously uncollected writings covering the wide range of Trilling’s concerns from his undergraduate days… More

The Promise of Realism

– "The Promise of Realism." Review of Bottom Dogs, by Edward Dahlberg, with an introduction by D.H. Lawrence (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1930); Pay Day, by Nathan Asch (New York: Brewer and Warren, 1930); and Frankie and Johnnie, by Meyer Levin (New York: John Day, 1930). Menorah Journal 18 (May 1930): 480-84.

The America of John Dos Passos

– "The America of John Dos Passos." Review of U.S.A., by John Dos Passos (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1937). Partisan Review 4 (April 1938): 26-32.
Excerpt: U.S.A. is far more impressive than even its three impressive parts—The 42nd Parallel, 1919, The Big Money—might have led one to expect. It stands as the important American… More

Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves

– Rodden, John, ed. Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.
Collection of essays by prominent critics on Trilling’s career; includes many of the most important essays on Trilling’s work published during his lifetime.

The Last Great Critic

– Glick, Nathan. “The Last Great Critic.” The Atlantic, July 2000.
Excerpt: I CANNOT close this review without noting two contributions by the editor. John Rodden’s introductory survey of the contents of this collection is richly but casually… More

Night Vision

– Delbanco, Andrew. “Night Vision.” Review of The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent: Selected Essays, by Lionel Trilling, edited with an introduction by Leon Wieseltier (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000). New York Review of Books, January 11, 2001.
Excerpt: Trilling’s real distinctiveness, I think, is that he was at heart a teacher. He carried into his writing the classroom principle that stating any proposition without at least a… More

Introduction to The Middle of the Journey

– Engel, Monroe. Introduction to The Middle of the Journey, by Lionel Trilling, v-xi. New York: New York Review of Books, 2002.
Excerpt: In its own forceful way, very unlike either Faulkner or Hemingway, The Middle of the Journey too is “at work upon the recalcitrant stuff of life.” This is… More

The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays

– Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2008. Original edition: New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2000.
Summary: Bringing together the thoughts of one of American literature’s sharpest cultural critics, this compendium will open the eyes of a whole new audience to the work of Lionel… More

Introduction to The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays

– Wieseltier, Leon. Introduction to The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays, ix-xvi. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2008.
Excerpt: Trilling emphatically believed that “the problems of Life” must indeed be brought before the mind, thought not for the purpose of eliciting anything so simple and so… More

Regrets Only: Lionel Trilling and His Discontents

– Menand, Louis. "Regrets Only: Lionel Trilling and his discontents." New Yorker, September 29, 2008.
Excerpt: Most people who picked up the book in 1950 would have understood it as an attack on the dogmatism and philistinism of the fellow-travelling left, but the term “liberal” is… More

Underrated: Lionel Trilling

– Himmelfarb, Gertrude. “Underrated: Lionel Trilling.” Standpoint, April 2009.
Excerpt: When Lionel Trilling died in 1975, he was not only the most eminent literary critic in America, but also, some would argue, the most eminent intellectual figure. Three years before… More

Why Trilling Matters

– Kirsch, Adam. Why Trilling Matters. New Haven : Yale University Press, 2011.

Lionel Trilling and the Social Imagination

– Beran, Michael Knox. “Lionel Trilling and the Social Imagination.” City Journal, Winter 2011.
Excerpt: Trilling’s hostility to the social imagination is nowhere more evident than in the fourth essay in The Liberal Imagination, a meditation on Henry James’s 1886 novel The… More

Does Lionel Trilling Matter?

– Massie, Allan. “Does Lionel Trilling Matter?” Review of Why Trilling Matters, by Adam Kirsch (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011). Times Literary Supplement, February 1, 2012.
Excerpt: In setting out to demonstrate that Trilling still matters, Kirsch is asserting the value of literature and a literary culture. If Trilling thought and wrote, frequently, about the… More

No Mean City

– “No Mean City.” Review of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs (New York: Random House, 1961). Mid-Century 37 (March 1962): 14-19.

What a Piece of Work is Man

– “What a Piece of Work is Man.” Review of Claude Lévi-Strauss: A World on the Wane, translated by John Russell (New York: Criterion, 1961). Mid-Century 38 (April 1962): 5-12.

Uncle Matthew

– Wilson, Edmund. "Uncle Matthew." Review of Matthew Arnold, by Lionel Trilling. The New Republic, March 1939. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 
Excerpt: But if Mr. Trilling has followed this fashion it is evidently not due to lack of competence. His observations on Arnold’s style are admirably phrased as well as just: “The… More

Beyond Liberalism

– Spender, Stephen. "Beyond Liberalism." Commentary, August 1950. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 
Excerpt: Mr. Trilling thinks the liberal imagination defective, and it is scarcely too much to say that his book might well be entitled “The Liberal Lack of Imagination.” What it… More

Liberalism, History, and Mr. Trilling

– Howe, Irving. "Liberalism, History, and Mr. Trilling." The Nation. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 
Excerpt: Lionel Trilling’s new book of essays, “The Liberal Imagination,” (Viking, $3.50), has as its central purpose a criticism of the liberal mind “as it drifts… More

Beyond Liberalism

– Williams, Raymond. "Beyond Liberalism." The Manchester Guardian," April 1966. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 
Excerpt: I had been puzzled for many years to know the source of a particular North Atlantic definition and structure of “the modern.” I had met it repeatedly, at my end of the… More

Commentary

Matthew Arnold

– New York: Norton, 1939.
A study of the work and thought of Matthew Arnold

E.M. Forster

– New York: New Directions, 1943.
Summary: “A concise critical study of Forster’s personality, short stories, and novels”

The Moral Critic

– Kristol, Irving. "The Moral Critic." Review of E.M. Forster, by Lionel Trilling. Enquiry, April 1944. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves, edited by John Rodden (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999).
Excerpts: [I]n that very same article Mr. Trilling incorporated two distinct chidings. He was angry with the Left for having surrendered its traditional moral vision, and at the same time… More

The Middle of the Journey

– New York: Viking, 1947.
Published in 1947, as the cold war was heating up, Lionel Trilling’s only novel was a prophetic reckoning with the bitter ideological disputes that were to come to a head in the McCarthy… More

Reality in America

– "Reality in America." Part 1 published in Partisan Review, January-February 1940. Part 2 published in The Nation, April 20, 1946.
Parrington was not a great mind; he was not a precise thinker or, except when measured by the low eminences that were about him, an impressive one. Separate Parrington from his informing… More

The Princess Casamassima

– "The Princess Casamassima," Introduction to The Princess Casamassima by Henry James. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1948.
Excerpt: In 1888, on the second of January, which in any year is likely to be a sad day, Henry James wrote to his friend William Dean Howells that his reputation had been dreadfully injured… More

The Immortality Ode

– "The Immortality Ode." Paper read before the English Institute, September 1941. First published in The English Institute Annual, 1941. New York: Columbia University Press, 1942.
Excerpt: Criticism, we know, must always be concerned with the poem itself. But a poem does not always exist only in itself; sometimes it has a very lively existence in its false or partial… More

Manners, Morals, and the Novel

– "Manners, Morals, and the Novel." Paper read at the Conference on the Heritage of the English-Speaking Peoples and Their Responsibilities, at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, September 1947. First published in The Kenyon Review 10, No. 1 (Winter 1948): 11-27.
Excerpt: The invitation that was made to me to address you this evening was couched in somewhat uncertain terms. Time, place and cordiality were perfectly clear, but when it came to the… More

The Kinsey Report

– "The Kinsey Report." Partisan Review, April 1948.
Excerpt: By virtue of its intrinsic nature and also because of its dramatic reception, the Kinsey Report, as it has come to be called, is an event of great importance in our culture. It is… More

The Opposing Self: Nine Essays in Criticism

– New York: Viking, 1955.
Summary: “Analytical studies trace the development theme of the individual in selected novels, letters, and poems from the end of the eighteenth century to the present.”  … More

The Situation of the American Intellectual at the Present Time

– Originally published as Trilling's contribution to "Our Country and Our Culture: A Symposium." Partisan Review 19, no. 3 (May 1952): 318-26.
Excerpt (from the essay as published in The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent): The editors of Partisan Review have long been thought to give a rather special credence and sympathy to the… More

Two Notes on David Riesman

– Originally published in two parts. Part 1: “A Change of Direction,” The Griffin 1, no. 3 (1952); Part 2: “American Portrait,” The Griffin 3, no. 5 (1954).

“That Smile of Parmenides Made Me Think”

– " 'That Smile of Parmenides Made Me Think.' " The Griffin 5, no. 2 (February 1956). Also published as "The Smile of Parmenides: George Santayana in his Letters" in Encounter, December 1956: 30-37.
Excerpt: One doesn’t have to read very far in Santayana s letters to become aware that it might be very hard to like this man–that, indeed, it might be remarkably easy to dislike him.… More

Emma and the Legend of Jane Austen

– First published as the introduction to Emma by Jane Austen, Riverside Edition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1957). Also published in Encounter 8, no. 6 (June 1957).

The Fate of Pleasure

– “The Fate of Pleasure.” Partisan Review, Summer 1963.
Excerpt: Of all critical essays in the English language, there is none that has established itself so firmly in our minds as Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads. Indeed, certain of… More

Freud: Within and Beyond Culture

– “Freud: Within and Beyond Culture.” First delivered as “Freud and the Crisis of our Culture” for the Freud Anniversary Lecture in the New York Psychoanalytical Society and the New York Psychoanalytical Institute, May 1955. Subsequently published as Freud and the Crisis of our Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955).
Excerpt: And in the degree that society was personalized by the concept of culture, the individual was seen to be far more deeply implicated in society than ever before. This is not an idea… More

The Leavis-Snow Controversy

– First published as “A Comment on the Leavis-Snow Controversy.” Commentary, June 1955.
Excerpt: It is now nearly eighty years since Matthew Arnold came to America on his famous lecture tour. Of his repertory of three lectures, none was calculated to give unqualified pleasure… More

Beyond Culture: Essays on Literature and Learning

– New York: Viking, 1965.
Summary: “In essays on education, literature, and psychoanalysis, Trilling addresses himself to the assumptions made by those who define themselves in terms of their relation to the… More

Sincerity and Authenticity

– The Carles Eliot Norton Lectures, 1969-1970. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972.
Summary: “Now and then,” writes Lionel Triling “it is possible to observe the moral life in process of revising itself.” In this new book he is concerned with such a… More

Art, Politics, and Will: Essays in Honor of Lionel Trilling

– Anderson, Quentin, Stephen Donadio, and Steven Marcus, eds. Art, Politics, and Will: Essays in Honor of Lionel Trilling. New York: Basic Books, 1977.
Art, Politics, and Will was originally conceived as a Festschrift for Trilling. However, he passed away before the book could be published, and it was converted into a memorial volume. The… More

Mind in the Modern World

– "Mind in the Modern World." The first Thomas Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Spring 1972. Then published in the Times Literary Supplement, Nov. 17, 1972, 1381-1385. Subsequently published as a small book by New York: The Viking Press, 1973.
Excerpt: In 1946, in the last year of his life, H. G. Wells published a little book which is surely one of the saddest and possibly one of the most portentous documents of our century. Much… More

Speaking of Literature and Society

– Trilling, Diana, ed. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980.
Summary: “Diana Trilling selected pieces from her husband’s previously uncollected writings covering the wide range of Trilling’s concerns from his undergraduate days… More

The Promise of Realism

– "The Promise of Realism." Review of Bottom Dogs, by Edward Dahlberg, with an introduction by D.H. Lawrence (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1930); Pay Day, by Nathan Asch (New York: Brewer and Warren, 1930); and Frankie and Johnnie, by Meyer Levin (New York: John Day, 1930). Menorah Journal 18 (May 1930): 480-84.

The America of John Dos Passos

– "The America of John Dos Passos." Review of U.S.A., by John Dos Passos (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1937). Partisan Review 4 (April 1938): 26-32.
Excerpt: U.S.A. is far more impressive than even its three impressive parts—The 42nd Parallel, 1919, The Big Money—might have led one to expect. It stands as the important American… More

Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves

– Rodden, John, ed. Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.
Collection of essays by prominent critics on Trilling’s career; includes many of the most important essays on Trilling’s work published during his lifetime.

The Last Great Critic

– Glick, Nathan. “The Last Great Critic.” The Atlantic, July 2000.
Excerpt: I CANNOT close this review without noting two contributions by the editor. John Rodden’s introductory survey of the contents of this collection is richly but casually… More

Night Vision

– Delbanco, Andrew. “Night Vision.” Review of The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent: Selected Essays, by Lionel Trilling, edited with an introduction by Leon Wieseltier (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000). New York Review of Books, January 11, 2001.
Excerpt: Trilling’s real distinctiveness, I think, is that he was at heart a teacher. He carried into his writing the classroom principle that stating any proposition without at least a… More

Introduction to The Middle of the Journey

– Engel, Monroe. Introduction to The Middle of the Journey, by Lionel Trilling, v-xi. New York: New York Review of Books, 2002.
Excerpt: In its own forceful way, very unlike either Faulkner or Hemingway, The Middle of the Journey too is “at work upon the recalcitrant stuff of life.” This is… More

The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays

– Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2008. Original edition: New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2000.
Summary: Bringing together the thoughts of one of American literature’s sharpest cultural critics, this compendium will open the eyes of a whole new audience to the work of Lionel… More

Introduction to The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays

– Wieseltier, Leon. Introduction to The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays, ix-xvi. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2008.
Excerpt: Trilling emphatically believed that “the problems of Life” must indeed be brought before the mind, thought not for the purpose of eliciting anything so simple and so… More

Regrets Only: Lionel Trilling and His Discontents

– Menand, Louis. "Regrets Only: Lionel Trilling and his discontents." New Yorker, September 29, 2008.
Excerpt: Most people who picked up the book in 1950 would have understood it as an attack on the dogmatism and philistinism of the fellow-travelling left, but the term “liberal” is… More

Underrated: Lionel Trilling

– Himmelfarb, Gertrude. “Underrated: Lionel Trilling.” Standpoint, April 2009.
Excerpt: When Lionel Trilling died in 1975, he was not only the most eminent literary critic in America, but also, some would argue, the most eminent intellectual figure. Three years before… More

Why Trilling Matters

– Kirsch, Adam. Why Trilling Matters. New Haven : Yale University Press, 2011.

Lionel Trilling and the Social Imagination

– Beran, Michael Knox. “Lionel Trilling and the Social Imagination.” City Journal, Winter 2011.
Excerpt: Trilling’s hostility to the social imagination is nowhere more evident than in the fourth essay in The Liberal Imagination, a meditation on Henry James’s 1886 novel The… More

Does Lionel Trilling Matter?

– Massie, Allan. “Does Lionel Trilling Matter?” Review of Why Trilling Matters, by Adam Kirsch (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011). Times Literary Supplement, February 1, 2012.
Excerpt: In setting out to demonstrate that Trilling still matters, Kirsch is asserting the value of literature and a literary culture. If Trilling thought and wrote, frequently, about the… More

No Mean City

– “No Mean City.” Review of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs (New York: Random House, 1961). Mid-Century 37 (March 1962): 14-19.

What a Piece of Work is Man

– “What a Piece of Work is Man.” Review of Claude Lévi-Strauss: A World on the Wane, translated by John Russell (New York: Criterion, 1961). Mid-Century 38 (April 1962): 5-12.

Uncle Matthew

– Wilson, Edmund. "Uncle Matthew." Review of Matthew Arnold, by Lionel Trilling. The New Republic, March 1939. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 
Excerpt: But if Mr. Trilling has followed this fashion it is evidently not due to lack of competence. His observations on Arnold’s style are admirably phrased as well as just: “The… More

Beyond Liberalism

– Spender, Stephen. "Beyond Liberalism." Commentary, August 1950. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 
Excerpt: Mr. Trilling thinks the liberal imagination defective, and it is scarcely too much to say that his book might well be entitled “The Liberal Lack of Imagination.” What it… More

Liberalism, History, and Mr. Trilling

– Howe, Irving. "Liberalism, History, and Mr. Trilling." The Nation. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 
Excerpt: Lionel Trilling’s new book of essays, “The Liberal Imagination,” (Viking, $3.50), has as its central purpose a criticism of the liberal mind “as it drifts… More

Beyond Liberalism

– Williams, Raymond. "Beyond Liberalism." The Manchester Guardian," April 1966. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 
Excerpt: I had been puzzled for many years to know the source of a particular North Atlantic definition and structure of “the modern.” I had met it repeatedly, at my end of the… More

Multimedia

Matthew Arnold

– New York: Norton, 1939.
A study of the work and thought of Matthew Arnold

E.M. Forster

– New York: New Directions, 1943.
Summary: “A concise critical study of Forster’s personality, short stories, and novels”

The Moral Critic

– Kristol, Irving. "The Moral Critic." Review of E.M. Forster, by Lionel Trilling. Enquiry, April 1944. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves, edited by John Rodden (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999).
Excerpts: [I]n that very same article Mr. Trilling incorporated two distinct chidings. He was angry with the Left for having surrendered its traditional moral vision, and at the same time… More

The Middle of the Journey

– New York: Viking, 1947.
Published in 1947, as the cold war was heating up, Lionel Trilling’s only novel was a prophetic reckoning with the bitter ideological disputes that were to come to a head in the McCarthy… More

Reality in America

– "Reality in America." Part 1 published in Partisan Review, January-February 1940. Part 2 published in The Nation, April 20, 1946.
Parrington was not a great mind; he was not a precise thinker or, except when measured by the low eminences that were about him, an impressive one. Separate Parrington from his informing… More

The Princess Casamassima

– "The Princess Casamassima," Introduction to The Princess Casamassima by Henry James. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1948.
Excerpt: In 1888, on the second of January, which in any year is likely to be a sad day, Henry James wrote to his friend William Dean Howells that his reputation had been dreadfully injured… More

The Immortality Ode

– "The Immortality Ode." Paper read before the English Institute, September 1941. First published in The English Institute Annual, 1941. New York: Columbia University Press, 1942.
Excerpt: Criticism, we know, must always be concerned with the poem itself. But a poem does not always exist only in itself; sometimes it has a very lively existence in its false or partial… More

Manners, Morals, and the Novel

– "Manners, Morals, and the Novel." Paper read at the Conference on the Heritage of the English-Speaking Peoples and Their Responsibilities, at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, September 1947. First published in The Kenyon Review 10, No. 1 (Winter 1948): 11-27.
Excerpt: The invitation that was made to me to address you this evening was couched in somewhat uncertain terms. Time, place and cordiality were perfectly clear, but when it came to the… More

The Kinsey Report

– "The Kinsey Report." Partisan Review, April 1948.
Excerpt: By virtue of its intrinsic nature and also because of its dramatic reception, the Kinsey Report, as it has come to be called, is an event of great importance in our culture. It is… More

The Opposing Self: Nine Essays in Criticism

– New York: Viking, 1955.
Summary: “Analytical studies trace the development theme of the individual in selected novels, letters, and poems from the end of the eighteenth century to the present.”  … More

The Situation of the American Intellectual at the Present Time

– Originally published as Trilling's contribution to "Our Country and Our Culture: A Symposium." Partisan Review 19, no. 3 (May 1952): 318-26.
Excerpt (from the essay as published in The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent): The editors of Partisan Review have long been thought to give a rather special credence and sympathy to the… More

Two Notes on David Riesman

– Originally published in two parts. Part 1: “A Change of Direction,” The Griffin 1, no. 3 (1952); Part 2: “American Portrait,” The Griffin 3, no. 5 (1954).

“That Smile of Parmenides Made Me Think”

– " 'That Smile of Parmenides Made Me Think.' " The Griffin 5, no. 2 (February 1956). Also published as "The Smile of Parmenides: George Santayana in his Letters" in Encounter, December 1956: 30-37.
Excerpt: One doesn’t have to read very far in Santayana s letters to become aware that it might be very hard to like this man–that, indeed, it might be remarkably easy to dislike him.… More

Emma and the Legend of Jane Austen

– First published as the introduction to Emma by Jane Austen, Riverside Edition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1957). Also published in Encounter 8, no. 6 (June 1957).

The Fate of Pleasure

– “The Fate of Pleasure.” Partisan Review, Summer 1963.
Excerpt: Of all critical essays in the English language, there is none that has established itself so firmly in our minds as Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads. Indeed, certain of… More

Freud: Within and Beyond Culture

– “Freud: Within and Beyond Culture.” First delivered as “Freud and the Crisis of our Culture” for the Freud Anniversary Lecture in the New York Psychoanalytical Society and the New York Psychoanalytical Institute, May 1955. Subsequently published as Freud and the Crisis of our Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955).
Excerpt: And in the degree that society was personalized by the concept of culture, the individual was seen to be far more deeply implicated in society than ever before. This is not an idea… More

The Leavis-Snow Controversy

– First published as “A Comment on the Leavis-Snow Controversy.” Commentary, June 1955.
Excerpt: It is now nearly eighty years since Matthew Arnold came to America on his famous lecture tour. Of his repertory of three lectures, none was calculated to give unqualified pleasure… More

Beyond Culture: Essays on Literature and Learning

– New York: Viking, 1965.
Summary: “In essays on education, literature, and psychoanalysis, Trilling addresses himself to the assumptions made by those who define themselves in terms of their relation to the… More

Sincerity and Authenticity

– The Carles Eliot Norton Lectures, 1969-1970. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972.
Summary: “Now and then,” writes Lionel Triling “it is possible to observe the moral life in process of revising itself.” In this new book he is concerned with such a… More

Art, Politics, and Will: Essays in Honor of Lionel Trilling

– Anderson, Quentin, Stephen Donadio, and Steven Marcus, eds. Art, Politics, and Will: Essays in Honor of Lionel Trilling. New York: Basic Books, 1977.
Art, Politics, and Will was originally conceived as a Festschrift for Trilling. However, he passed away before the book could be published, and it was converted into a memorial volume. The… More

Mind in the Modern World

– "Mind in the Modern World." The first Thomas Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Spring 1972. Then published in the Times Literary Supplement, Nov. 17, 1972, 1381-1385. Subsequently published as a small book by New York: The Viking Press, 1973.
Excerpt: In 1946, in the last year of his life, H. G. Wells published a little book which is surely one of the saddest and possibly one of the most portentous documents of our century. Much… More

Speaking of Literature and Society

– Trilling, Diana, ed. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980.
Summary: “Diana Trilling selected pieces from her husband’s previously uncollected writings covering the wide range of Trilling’s concerns from his undergraduate days… More

The Promise of Realism

– "The Promise of Realism." Review of Bottom Dogs, by Edward Dahlberg, with an introduction by D.H. Lawrence (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1930); Pay Day, by Nathan Asch (New York: Brewer and Warren, 1930); and Frankie and Johnnie, by Meyer Levin (New York: John Day, 1930). Menorah Journal 18 (May 1930): 480-84.

The America of John Dos Passos

– "The America of John Dos Passos." Review of U.S.A., by John Dos Passos (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1937). Partisan Review 4 (April 1938): 26-32.
Excerpt: U.S.A. is far more impressive than even its three impressive parts—The 42nd Parallel, 1919, The Big Money—might have led one to expect. It stands as the important American… More

Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves

– Rodden, John, ed. Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.
Collection of essays by prominent critics on Trilling’s career; includes many of the most important essays on Trilling’s work published during his lifetime.

The Last Great Critic

– Glick, Nathan. “The Last Great Critic.” The Atlantic, July 2000.
Excerpt: I CANNOT close this review without noting two contributions by the editor. John Rodden’s introductory survey of the contents of this collection is richly but casually… More

Night Vision

– Delbanco, Andrew. “Night Vision.” Review of The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent: Selected Essays, by Lionel Trilling, edited with an introduction by Leon Wieseltier (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000). New York Review of Books, January 11, 2001.
Excerpt: Trilling’s real distinctiveness, I think, is that he was at heart a teacher. He carried into his writing the classroom principle that stating any proposition without at least a… More

Introduction to The Middle of the Journey

– Engel, Monroe. Introduction to The Middle of the Journey, by Lionel Trilling, v-xi. New York: New York Review of Books, 2002.
Excerpt: In its own forceful way, very unlike either Faulkner or Hemingway, The Middle of the Journey too is “at work upon the recalcitrant stuff of life.” This is… More

The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays

– Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2008. Original edition: New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2000.
Summary: Bringing together the thoughts of one of American literature’s sharpest cultural critics, this compendium will open the eyes of a whole new audience to the work of Lionel… More

Introduction to The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays

– Wieseltier, Leon. Introduction to The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays, ix-xvi. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2008.
Excerpt: Trilling emphatically believed that “the problems of Life” must indeed be brought before the mind, thought not for the purpose of eliciting anything so simple and so… More

Regrets Only: Lionel Trilling and His Discontents

– Menand, Louis. "Regrets Only: Lionel Trilling and his discontents." New Yorker, September 29, 2008.
Excerpt: Most people who picked up the book in 1950 would have understood it as an attack on the dogmatism and philistinism of the fellow-travelling left, but the term “liberal” is… More

Underrated: Lionel Trilling

– Himmelfarb, Gertrude. “Underrated: Lionel Trilling.” Standpoint, April 2009.
Excerpt: When Lionel Trilling died in 1975, he was not only the most eminent literary critic in America, but also, some would argue, the most eminent intellectual figure. Three years before… More

Why Trilling Matters

– Kirsch, Adam. Why Trilling Matters. New Haven : Yale University Press, 2011.

Lionel Trilling and the Social Imagination

– Beran, Michael Knox. “Lionel Trilling and the Social Imagination.” City Journal, Winter 2011.
Excerpt: Trilling’s hostility to the social imagination is nowhere more evident than in the fourth essay in The Liberal Imagination, a meditation on Henry James’s 1886 novel The… More

Does Lionel Trilling Matter?

– Massie, Allan. “Does Lionel Trilling Matter?” Review of Why Trilling Matters, by Adam Kirsch (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011). Times Literary Supplement, February 1, 2012.
Excerpt: In setting out to demonstrate that Trilling still matters, Kirsch is asserting the value of literature and a literary culture. If Trilling thought and wrote, frequently, about the… More

No Mean City

– “No Mean City.” Review of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs (New York: Random House, 1961). Mid-Century 37 (March 1962): 14-19.

What a Piece of Work is Man

– “What a Piece of Work is Man.” Review of Claude Lévi-Strauss: A World on the Wane, translated by John Russell (New York: Criterion, 1961). Mid-Century 38 (April 1962): 5-12.

Uncle Matthew

– Wilson, Edmund. "Uncle Matthew." Review of Matthew Arnold, by Lionel Trilling. The New Republic, March 1939. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 
Excerpt: But if Mr. Trilling has followed this fashion it is evidently not due to lack of competence. His observations on Arnold’s style are admirably phrased as well as just: “The… More

Beyond Liberalism

– Spender, Stephen. "Beyond Liberalism." Commentary, August 1950. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 
Excerpt: Mr. Trilling thinks the liberal imagination defective, and it is scarcely too much to say that his book might well be entitled “The Liberal Lack of Imagination.” What it… More

Liberalism, History, and Mr. Trilling

– Howe, Irving. "Liberalism, History, and Mr. Trilling." The Nation. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 
Excerpt: Lionel Trilling’s new book of essays, “The Liberal Imagination,” (Viking, $3.50), has as its central purpose a criticism of the liberal mind “as it drifts… More

Beyond Liberalism

– Williams, Raymond. "Beyond Liberalism." The Manchester Guardian," April 1966. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 
Excerpt: I had been puzzled for many years to know the source of a particular North Atlantic definition and structure of “the modern.” I had met it repeatedly, at my end of the… More

Teaching

Matthew Arnold

– New York: Norton, 1939.
A study of the work and thought of Matthew Arnold

E.M. Forster

– New York: New Directions, 1943.
Summary: “A concise critical study of Forster’s personality, short stories, and novels”

The Moral Critic

– Kristol, Irving. "The Moral Critic." Review of E.M. Forster, by Lionel Trilling. Enquiry, April 1944. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves, edited by John Rodden (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999).
Excerpts: [I]n that very same article Mr. Trilling incorporated two distinct chidings. He was angry with the Left for having surrendered its traditional moral vision, and at the same time… More

The Middle of the Journey

– New York: Viking, 1947.
Published in 1947, as the cold war was heating up, Lionel Trilling’s only novel was a prophetic reckoning with the bitter ideological disputes that were to come to a head in the McCarthy… More

Reality in America

– "Reality in America." Part 1 published in Partisan Review, January-February 1940. Part 2 published in The Nation, April 20, 1946.
Parrington was not a great mind; he was not a precise thinker or, except when measured by the low eminences that were about him, an impressive one. Separate Parrington from his informing… More

The Princess Casamassima

– "The Princess Casamassima," Introduction to The Princess Casamassima by Henry James. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1948.
Excerpt: In 1888, on the second of January, which in any year is likely to be a sad day, Henry James wrote to his friend William Dean Howells that his reputation had been dreadfully injured… More

The Immortality Ode

– "The Immortality Ode." Paper read before the English Institute, September 1941. First published in The English Institute Annual, 1941. New York: Columbia University Press, 1942.
Excerpt: Criticism, we know, must always be concerned with the poem itself. But a poem does not always exist only in itself; sometimes it has a very lively existence in its false or partial… More

Manners, Morals, and the Novel

– "Manners, Morals, and the Novel." Paper read at the Conference on the Heritage of the English-Speaking Peoples and Their Responsibilities, at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, September 1947. First published in The Kenyon Review 10, No. 1 (Winter 1948): 11-27.
Excerpt: The invitation that was made to me to address you this evening was couched in somewhat uncertain terms. Time, place and cordiality were perfectly clear, but when it came to the… More

The Kinsey Report

– "The Kinsey Report." Partisan Review, April 1948.
Excerpt: By virtue of its intrinsic nature and also because of its dramatic reception, the Kinsey Report, as it has come to be called, is an event of great importance in our culture. It is… More

The Opposing Self: Nine Essays in Criticism

– New York: Viking, 1955.
Summary: “Analytical studies trace the development theme of the individual in selected novels, letters, and poems from the end of the eighteenth century to the present.”  … More

The Situation of the American Intellectual at the Present Time

– Originally published as Trilling's contribution to "Our Country and Our Culture: A Symposium." Partisan Review 19, no. 3 (May 1952): 318-26.
Excerpt (from the essay as published in The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent): The editors of Partisan Review have long been thought to give a rather special credence and sympathy to the… More

Two Notes on David Riesman

– Originally published in two parts. Part 1: “A Change of Direction,” The Griffin 1, no. 3 (1952); Part 2: “American Portrait,” The Griffin 3, no. 5 (1954).

“That Smile of Parmenides Made Me Think”

– " 'That Smile of Parmenides Made Me Think.' " The Griffin 5, no. 2 (February 1956). Also published as "The Smile of Parmenides: George Santayana in his Letters" in Encounter, December 1956: 30-37.
Excerpt: One doesn’t have to read very far in Santayana s letters to become aware that it might be very hard to like this man–that, indeed, it might be remarkably easy to dislike him.… More

Emma and the Legend of Jane Austen

– First published as the introduction to Emma by Jane Austen, Riverside Edition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1957). Also published in Encounter 8, no. 6 (June 1957).

The Fate of Pleasure

– “The Fate of Pleasure.” Partisan Review, Summer 1963.
Excerpt: Of all critical essays in the English language, there is none that has established itself so firmly in our minds as Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads. Indeed, certain of… More

Freud: Within and Beyond Culture

– “Freud: Within and Beyond Culture.” First delivered as “Freud and the Crisis of our Culture” for the Freud Anniversary Lecture in the New York Psychoanalytical Society and the New York Psychoanalytical Institute, May 1955. Subsequently published as Freud and the Crisis of our Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955).
Excerpt: And in the degree that society was personalized by the concept of culture, the individual was seen to be far more deeply implicated in society than ever before. This is not an idea… More

The Leavis-Snow Controversy

– First published as “A Comment on the Leavis-Snow Controversy.” Commentary, June 1955.
Excerpt: It is now nearly eighty years since Matthew Arnold came to America on his famous lecture tour. Of his repertory of three lectures, none was calculated to give unqualified pleasure… More

Beyond Culture: Essays on Literature and Learning

– New York: Viking, 1965.
Summary: “In essays on education, literature, and psychoanalysis, Trilling addresses himself to the assumptions made by those who define themselves in terms of their relation to the… More

Sincerity and Authenticity

– The Carles Eliot Norton Lectures, 1969-1970. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972.
Summary: “Now and then,” writes Lionel Triling “it is possible to observe the moral life in process of revising itself.” In this new book he is concerned with such a… More

Art, Politics, and Will: Essays in Honor of Lionel Trilling

– Anderson, Quentin, Stephen Donadio, and Steven Marcus, eds. Art, Politics, and Will: Essays in Honor of Lionel Trilling. New York: Basic Books, 1977.
Art, Politics, and Will was originally conceived as a Festschrift for Trilling. However, he passed away before the book could be published, and it was converted into a memorial volume. The… More

Mind in the Modern World

– "Mind in the Modern World." The first Thomas Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Spring 1972. Then published in the Times Literary Supplement, Nov. 17, 1972, 1381-1385. Subsequently published as a small book by New York: The Viking Press, 1973.
Excerpt: In 1946, in the last year of his life, H. G. Wells published a little book which is surely one of the saddest and possibly one of the most portentous documents of our century. Much… More

Speaking of Literature and Society

– Trilling, Diana, ed. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980.
Summary: “Diana Trilling selected pieces from her husband’s previously uncollected writings covering the wide range of Trilling’s concerns from his undergraduate days… More

The Promise of Realism

– "The Promise of Realism." Review of Bottom Dogs, by Edward Dahlberg, with an introduction by D.H. Lawrence (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1930); Pay Day, by Nathan Asch (New York: Brewer and Warren, 1930); and Frankie and Johnnie, by Meyer Levin (New York: John Day, 1930). Menorah Journal 18 (May 1930): 480-84.

The America of John Dos Passos

– "The America of John Dos Passos." Review of U.S.A., by John Dos Passos (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1937). Partisan Review 4 (April 1938): 26-32.
Excerpt: U.S.A. is far more impressive than even its three impressive parts—The 42nd Parallel, 1919, The Big Money—might have led one to expect. It stands as the important American… More

Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves

– Rodden, John, ed. Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.
Collection of essays by prominent critics on Trilling’s career; includes many of the most important essays on Trilling’s work published during his lifetime.

The Last Great Critic

– Glick, Nathan. “The Last Great Critic.” The Atlantic, July 2000.
Excerpt: I CANNOT close this review without noting two contributions by the editor. John Rodden’s introductory survey of the contents of this collection is richly but casually… More

Night Vision

– Delbanco, Andrew. “Night Vision.” Review of The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent: Selected Essays, by Lionel Trilling, edited with an introduction by Leon Wieseltier (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000). New York Review of Books, January 11, 2001.
Excerpt: Trilling’s real distinctiveness, I think, is that he was at heart a teacher. He carried into his writing the classroom principle that stating any proposition without at least a… More

Introduction to The Middle of the Journey

– Engel, Monroe. Introduction to The Middle of the Journey, by Lionel Trilling, v-xi. New York: New York Review of Books, 2002.
Excerpt: In its own forceful way, very unlike either Faulkner or Hemingway, The Middle of the Journey too is “at work upon the recalcitrant stuff of life.” This is… More

The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays

– Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2008. Original edition: New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2000.
Summary: Bringing together the thoughts of one of American literature’s sharpest cultural critics, this compendium will open the eyes of a whole new audience to the work of Lionel… More

Introduction to The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays

– Wieseltier, Leon. Introduction to The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays, ix-xvi. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2008.
Excerpt: Trilling emphatically believed that “the problems of Life” must indeed be brought before the mind, thought not for the purpose of eliciting anything so simple and so… More

Regrets Only: Lionel Trilling and His Discontents

– Menand, Louis. "Regrets Only: Lionel Trilling and his discontents." New Yorker, September 29, 2008.
Excerpt: Most people who picked up the book in 1950 would have understood it as an attack on the dogmatism and philistinism of the fellow-travelling left, but the term “liberal” is… More

Underrated: Lionel Trilling

– Himmelfarb, Gertrude. “Underrated: Lionel Trilling.” Standpoint, April 2009.
Excerpt: When Lionel Trilling died in 1975, he was not only the most eminent literary critic in America, but also, some would argue, the most eminent intellectual figure. Three years before… More

Why Trilling Matters

– Kirsch, Adam. Why Trilling Matters. New Haven : Yale University Press, 2011.

Lionel Trilling and the Social Imagination

– Beran, Michael Knox. “Lionel Trilling and the Social Imagination.” City Journal, Winter 2011.
Excerpt: Trilling’s hostility to the social imagination is nowhere more evident than in the fourth essay in The Liberal Imagination, a meditation on Henry James’s 1886 novel The… More

Does Lionel Trilling Matter?

– Massie, Allan. “Does Lionel Trilling Matter?” Review of Why Trilling Matters, by Adam Kirsch (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011). Times Literary Supplement, February 1, 2012.
Excerpt: In setting out to demonstrate that Trilling still matters, Kirsch is asserting the value of literature and a literary culture. If Trilling thought and wrote, frequently, about the… More

No Mean City

– “No Mean City.” Review of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs (New York: Random House, 1961). Mid-Century 37 (March 1962): 14-19.

What a Piece of Work is Man

– “What a Piece of Work is Man.” Review of Claude Lévi-Strauss: A World on the Wane, translated by John Russell (New York: Criterion, 1961). Mid-Century 38 (April 1962): 5-12.

Uncle Matthew

– Wilson, Edmund. "Uncle Matthew." Review of Matthew Arnold, by Lionel Trilling. The New Republic, March 1939. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 
Excerpt: But if Mr. Trilling has followed this fashion it is evidently not due to lack of competence. His observations on Arnold’s style are admirably phrased as well as just: “The… More

Beyond Liberalism

– Spender, Stephen. "Beyond Liberalism." Commentary, August 1950. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 
Excerpt: Mr. Trilling thinks the liberal imagination defective, and it is scarcely too much to say that his book might well be entitled “The Liberal Lack of Imagination.” What it… More

Liberalism, History, and Mr. Trilling

– Howe, Irving. "Liberalism, History, and Mr. Trilling." The Nation. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 
Excerpt: Lionel Trilling’s new book of essays, “The Liberal Imagination,” (Viking, $3.50), has as its central purpose a criticism of the liberal mind “as it drifts… More

Beyond Liberalism

– Williams, Raymond. "Beyond Liberalism." The Manchester Guardian," April 1966. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 
Excerpt: I had been puzzled for many years to know the source of a particular North Atlantic definition and structure of “the modern.” I had met it repeatedly, at my end of the… More