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Historical criticism is one of the major schools of criticism, popular since
the nineteenth century. Even in the twentieth century, it had its
stalwarts. Lionel Trilling, a leading critic of our times, has
significantly enlightened this school of criticism. Cultural criticism, being one of its
major offshoots, finds considerable voice in his criticism. His critical tenet of
treating history as a useful means is very significant. Trilling, in his concept of
history and historical criticism, seems to be at his sharpest and most trenchant in
obvious though implied responses to the poignant and fundamental
questions emerging from contemporary cultural experiences. His understanding of
the fact, as expressed in The Opposing Self (1955), that the `self' gains knowledge
of its own being by first learning of the force continuously suppressing
it—an awareness of the relationship between the self and its oppressor,
the surrounding culture—places him at a point which seems to be the link
between the `tradition' and the `modern.' His is an incessant search for finding
vital ways in which the relationship can be negotiated in criticism. In the course
of the evaluation, a `moral awareness' also develops, eventually resulting in
the growth of aesthetic sensitivity. Very close to Arnold and Hegel, as far as
their criticism relates literature to life, Trilling's history of culture finds its
reflection in his following lines about Hegel:
His [Hegel's] perception of his new mode of judgment … led to his
giving to art an importance quite without precedent in moral philosophy.
For Hegel, art is the activity of man in which spirit expresses itself
not only as utility, not only according to law, but as grace, as
transcendence, as manner and style. He brought together the moral and the
aesthetic judgment. (Trilling, 1955, p. xii)
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