Cultural Memory in Contemporary Fiction: F. R. Leavis’s and Matthew Arnold’s Intellectual Presence in A. S. Byatt’s Work

Abstract

The concept of “cultural memory” serves as the foundation for this article, which explains the complex relationships between two prominent figures in the history of English letters, Matthew Arnold and F. R. Leavis, as well as how A. S. Byatt’s own work was influenced by their combined, though occasionally diametrically opposed, approaches to literature, culture, and criticism. As a result, this article begins with a discussion of the conflictual continuity and/or sustained ambivalence in Byatt’s critique of Leavisite criticism. It does this by first looking into Leavis’s position within the larger literary criticism context and then focusing on how Leavisite criticism fits into Byatt’s critical thought. Thus, Byatt’s assertion that Leavis made English literature the focal point of university education is examined by first looking into Leavis’s Cambridge. Lastly, Byatt’s criticism of Leavis’s idea of English studies is looked into in the context of critical evaluations of English literature’s place in higher education, at the same time that Byatt’s work is used as a prism to analyse the Arnoldian matrix of the Leavisite concept of “moral seriousness”. Afterward, Byatt’s critical work is critically examined in the framework of culture, society, and literature, continuing Arnold’s legacy.