The Great Tradition by F.R. Leavis
Published 1948 · 304 pages · 90,000 words · about 8 hours at an average pace · Essays & Criticism
How hard is The Great Tradition to read?
The Great Tradition scores 60 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 60 out of 100
- Dense with evaluative critical vocabulary but resists theoretical jargon.
- Sentence structure: 62 out of 100
- Abstraction: 68 out of 100
- Abstract moral-aesthetic claims argued through dense textual demonstration.
- Information density: 74 out of 100
- Argument and close reading are continuous; every sentence carries weight.
- Narrative indirection: 15 out of 100
- The argument circles its examples before rendering judgment.
- Symbolic density: 14 out of 100
- Life and vitality function as charged values throughout.
- Ironic distance: 14 out of 100
- Withering dismissals coexist with earnest advocacy.
- Resolution withholding: 12 out of 100
- Leavis renders firm verdicts; his conclusions are anything but withheld.
- Structural complexity: 35 out of 100
- Five chapters, each a sustained study of a major novelist in the tradition.
How The Great Tradition is regarded
The Great Tradition holds a literary regard score of 87 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.