English by Example: F. R. Leavis and the Americanization of Modern England

Raymond Williams tells a story about F. R. Leavis from their years teaching together at Cambridge. At a meeting in 1961 to consider a new course on the novel, Williams recalls that "There was one major argument . . . The crux was whether the paper should be the English novel, or the novel in general. [Leavis] wanted the English novel only. A majority were against him."¹ After Leavis rejects the inclusion of European novels, in part because of the difficulties of translation, a committee member poses a further question: "'Then what about American novelists? Faulkner, for example'" (LRI, 117). Williams notes,

At this point I have to hold onto my seat. I have the clearest memory of what was said next, and of the mood in which it was said: one of fierce pleasure in the argument but also of surprising conviction. "Faulkner!" Leavis said. "When the Americans moved in on Europe after the War, they had to have a great novelist. That's who they chose, Faulkner." Nobody knew, at the time, what to say after that.

(LRI, 117)

This is more than an opinionated dismissal of a major American writer. Rather, Williams's anecdote highlights the anti-Americanism that Leavis demonstrated from his earliest published work. While such sentiments might seem to participate in general anxieties about American cultural hegemony during the Cold War, Leavis's anxieties can be traced back in time to the interwar years.² Moreover, rather than a decorative flourish layered upon deeper insecurities, this reaction to America resides at the heart of Leavis's theories of literature and culture.³ Although Leavis's critics have largely overlooked his abundant references to America, Leavis relies on the example of America, and upon transatlantic comparison, as a method in his cultural analyses.⁴ He wields the term "Americanisation"—a rough synonym for standardization—in ways that reveal the national subtext of the "mass civilisation" that Leavis understands to menace interwar England. Leavis's position as the self-appointed guardian of Englishness, an image that persists in critical treatments of his work and legacy, is made possible by the transatlantic connections and reactions underlying his nationalist projects. While Leavis is remembered as guardian of the high, the elite, and the English, I will contend that these discourses are importantly produced by the twin processes of Americanization and transatlantic comparison.

It is telling that Leavis situates the American canonization of Faulkner within a European context. Leavis's image of the Americans "moving in" on Europe has a history in his writing, as well as in European thought, dating back to the period after the First World War. Indeed, his seemingly stark reaction takes part in a broader European dialogue about the transatlantic encroachment of the United States. While some in Europe perceived America as a beneficial new source of commodified pleasures such as jazz records, Hollywood films, and Ford motor cars, others saw these same commodities as a threat to European values and traditions.⁵ Leavis shares this sense of threat, yet his attitudes are particularly revealing in their differences from those circulating in Europe.

Two prominent critics exemplify major, distinct styles of European reaction to the idea of Americanization between the wars: the Frankfurt School theorist, Theodor Adorno, and the French social commentator, André Siegfried. Adorno, who has often been seen as an "anti-American intellectual elitist," despite his long-time residence in the United States, famously lambasted both jazz and the popular cinema as symptoms of what he and Max Horkheimer called the "culture industry."⁶ Like Leavis, Adorno lamented the corruption of the arts into bland fare aimed at the capitalist "consumer."⁷ Yet whereas Adorno emphasized the value of the arts in both Europe and the United States, Leavis turned decisively to Englishness as the antidote to what he saw as a growing cultural malaise. Adorno's concern was for the fate of the arts themselves; Leavis's was for the fate of the arts in the service of a nation.

Leavis thus shared much in common with European nationalists such as Siegfried whose interests were...