SOURCE: Elledge, W. Paul. “The Profaning of Romanticism in Trilling's ‘Of This Time, Of That Place’.” Modern Fiction Studies 29, no. 2 (summer 1983): 213-26.

In the following essay, Elledge explores the tension between romantic and classical values in “Of This Time, Of That Place.”

For all its architectonic elegance, its shrewdly crafted network of thematically reinforcing symbols, its wry wit and multi-layered ironies, its stylistic grace and haunting poignance, Lionel Trilling's oft-anthologized “Of This Time, Of That Place” (1943) has inspired neither the amount nor the intensity of critical examination one might reasonably have expected of a story so inherently appealing, by virtue of its setting, characters, and the situation it dramatizes, to the academic community. Why this should be the case, I am not sure. Perhaps Trilling's own commentary¹ had the (unconsciously desired?) effect of curbing further investigation; perhaps the story has grown stale through overexposure, or old-fashioned by juxtaposition...