Lionel Trilling's Cultural Criticism

Lionel Trilling was a famous American literary and social-cultural critic in the 20th century. As an important participant of "the New York Intellectuals", and as a senior literature professor at Columbia University, Trilling combined the double identities of an expert and a public intellectual in a perfect way. With his unique moral perspective, elegant and calm manners and a rich collection of cogent critical publications, he had firmly established himself in the American critical arena where different schools of critical theories created a perplexing scenario. This dissertation is equipped with a perspective that originates from cultural criticism, and it aims to present one of the first thorough studies on Trilling in China on the basis of the clarified knowledge about the theoretical influences on Trilling included in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 presents the major critical concerns of Trilling arranged in a horizontal way, namely "the middle class and liberalism, critique of the New Criticism,professor-critic, and public intellectual". Chapter 3 gives the analysis of the methodological features of Trilling's cultural criticism: transcending culture at three levels; discovering the dialogue relationship of critical elements in the cultural framework; and the confirmation of the integral values of literary works. Chapter 4 deals with the discourse features of Trilling's cultural criticism, which is an attempt to study critical themes at the formal level. The findings in this aspect include Trilling's critical manners, critical plot, paradoxical and unsystematic features of his critical discourse. In the final chapter, Chapter 5, Trilling's inspiration on the post-deconstruction era is discussed, which will help link Trilling studies to some current cultural phenomena to embody the contemporary value of this research project.