Irving Babbitt was a giant of American criticism. His writings
from the 1890s to the 1930s helped advance American criticism and
scholarship to international esteem. More than seventy years after
his death his intellectual staying power remains undiminished. "On
Literature, Culture, and Religion" is an ideal introduction to this
seminal American thinker.
Babbitt's opinions were uncompromising, and his vocal allies and
opponents included almost every name in American literature and
scholarship: T. S. Eliot, Edmund Wilson, Paul Elmer More, H. L.
Mencken, and Sinclair Lewis. A founder of New Humanism, Babbitt was
best known for his indictment of Romanticism and his insistence
that the modern age had gone wrong. Babbitt argued for a renewal of
humanistic values and standards--which he found best articulated in
classical Greece, Hinduism, and Buddhism. The selections cover
topics central to Babbitt: criticism, Romanti-cism, classical
literature, French literature, education, democracy, and Buddhism.
They typify Babbitt's method: recondite allusion, penetrating
insight and analysis, impeccable scholarship, and unrelenting
pursuit of the furthest ramification and the profoundest
implication. The original annotation is retained. Brief
introductions to the essays place them in the Babbitt canon.
A major introductory essay by George A. Panichas surveys
Babbitt's career and critical reception and summarizes the concepts
that inform Babbitt's writing. Panichas raises again controversial
issues that were not really resolved in Babbitt's time. The essay
will challenge those long familiar with Babbitt and New Humanism
and those newly introduced thereto.
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