"The function of literature, through all its mutations, has been to make us aware of the particularity of selves, and the high authority of the self in its quarrel with its society and its culture. Literature is in that sense subversive"
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Trilling is smuggling a radical claim into the calm cadences of a mid-century critic: the most “civilizing” art form is, at bottom, a troublemaker. By framing literature’s “function” as something consistent “through all its mutations,” he gives the argument the weight of history while refusing to pin it to any single style, politics, or canon. The key move is his insistence on “particularity of selves.” Not the Self as slogan or brand, but the messy, specific interior life that doesn’t neatly convert into civic virtue or ideological alignment.
The subtext is a rebuke to any culture that treats books as moral furniture: tasteful objects that confirm what a society already believes about itself. Trilling’s “high authority of the self” is deliberately provocative, especially for a critic writing in an era defined by conformity pressures and mass politics (from Cold War consensus liberalism to the shadow of totalitarian propaganda). He’s arguing that the novel, the poem, the essay earn their keep by staging a “quarrel” between individual consciousness and the scripts offered by culture. “Quarrel” matters: it’s ongoing, intimate, sometimes petty, rarely heroic. Literature doesn’t simply oppose society; it worries it, interrogates it, makes it feel less inevitable.
Calling literature “subversive” is less a romantic celebration of rebellion than a structural diagnosis. If a society runs on shared stories, then a form dedicated to inconvenient specificity will always be a solvent. The paradox is Trilling’s point: the more seriously a culture takes literature, the more it invites dissent from within its own language.
The subtext is a rebuke to any culture that treats books as moral furniture: tasteful objects that confirm what a society already believes about itself. Trilling’s “high authority of the self” is deliberately provocative, especially for a critic writing in an era defined by conformity pressures and mass politics (from Cold War consensus liberalism to the shadow of totalitarian propaganda). He’s arguing that the novel, the poem, the essay earn their keep by staging a “quarrel” between individual consciousness and the scripts offered by culture. “Quarrel” matters: it’s ongoing, intimate, sometimes petty, rarely heroic. Literature doesn’t simply oppose society; it worries it, interrogates it, makes it feel less inevitable.
Calling literature “subversive” is less a romantic celebration of rebellion than a structural diagnosis. If a society runs on shared stories, then a form dedicated to inconvenient specificity will always be a solvent. The paradox is Trilling’s point: the more seriously a culture takes literature, the more it invites dissent from within its own language.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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