Title: On Irving Babbitt’s Literary Thoughts

Abstract: Irving Babbitt is the founder of the American New Humanism Movement in the early 20th century. He advocated the spirit of criticism and positivism, and provided a counterpoint to Romantic literature since the Western Renaissance. He promoted classical literature, and emphasized the combination of rationality and imagination, and morality and aesthetics in classical literature, but he did not call for a return to ancient times. He argued that the development of literature should be a fusion of the ancient and modern, a recovery of the classical spirit, and a reconciliation among modern cultures. This attitude also is the literary representation of his philosophy to keep balance between “the one” and “the many.”

Keywords: Irving Babbitt, New Humanism, literary thoughts

Author: Bai Liu, Associate Professor, Foreign Studies College, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, Hunan, China.