Cambridge critic who, with I.A. Richards, frames McLuhan's Cambridge inheritance in Dialogue 11. Cameron credits Leavis with giving McLuhan the idea that the ambiguities of language have a grammar that can be applied to almost any problem. In the 1930s McLuhan was "decidedly Leavis versus Richards"; over the following decades he became "less and less Leavis and more and more Richards" — the drift Bob ties to McLuhan's 1944 essay "Poetic and Rhetorical Exegesis."
Across the dialogues
The early pole of McLuhan's Cambridge inheritance — the grammar of ambiguity
Leavis's gift to McLuhan — that the ambiguities of language carry a grammar applicable to almost any problem.
"the ambiguities of language have a certain grammar to them and that this universal grammar can be applied to almost any problem"
McLuhan's 1944 essay opposes poetic exegesis ("making a world") to rhetorical exegesis — the axis on which Leavis and Richards are set.
"Poetic exegesis versus rhetorical exegesis, right?"
Grouped into the serious "we" — named with Eliot, Richards, Empson and McLuhan as the exacting minority set against the crowd's "regular we"
Leavis is enrolled in Cameron's serious "we" — the exacting Cambridge minority (Eliot, Richards, Empson, McLuhan, Leavis) whose "we" is categorically unlike "the regular we" of the crowd, the distinction that decides who could retrieve the Greek world of contemplation.
"There's a very big difference between the we of Eliot, Richards, Empson, and McLuhan, let's say, and Leavis."
Connections
Gave McLuhan the idea that the ambiguities of language have a grammar applicable to any problem.
The 1944 essay "Poetic and Rhetorical Exegesis" stages Leavis against Richards; McLuhan drifted from one to the other over decades.