The literary imagination and the explanation of socio-cultural change in modern Britain

1969 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Filmer
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Change ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Common Language ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
Critical Thought ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Modern Britain ◽  
Organic Community ◽  
Raymond Williams ◽  
The Ideal

Much of the substance of the contemporary debate on the nature and consequences of ‘mass culture’ in Britain is to be found in the work of four English literary critics: T. S. Eliot, F. R. Leavis, Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams (1). Their work is in the Utopian tradition of social and aesthetic critical thought that has been termed “the English Dream: the ideal of the collective, unalienated folk society, where honest men work together and create together” (2); the ideal of the organic community, in short. Such a society is seen as composed of homogeneous, self-sufficient, stable and tradition-dominated communities, comprising a population which shares a common language and culture, and which is typified—but not exclusively bound—by a mentality attached to the tangible, local and known (3).

scholarly journals Masculinity in Indonesian Popular Culture in the Early Era of the New Order Regime

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 47
Author(s):  
Ferry Fauzi Hermawan
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Male Dominance ◽  
New Historicism ◽  
New Order ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One ◽  
Sexual Object ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
The Ideal

This study aimed to identify the forms of masculinity in the Indonesian popular culture in the beginning of New Order regime. This study was based on the two novels: Cross Mama and Kekasih-Kekasih Gelap, written by Motinggo Busye. The analysis used new historicism theory proposed by Stephen Greenblatt. The analysis also considered various cultural contexts emerged in 1970s. The results show three shared trends in the novels. The first trend shows that the masculinity tends to be represented by both men worshiping patriarchal values such as the myth of woman’s virginity and men perceiving woman as a sexual object. The second trend shows that masculinity is stereotyped based on masculinity, power, and male dominance. The third trend shows that masculinity relates to various products of mass culture at the time. This last trend shows that in that era,the ideal male figure is represented as the one who: (1) is sexually active with many women, (2) has a muscular body, (3) has a handsome look, and (4) has a financial capability. Besides the shared three trends, the result also shows that the texts in the novels do not only reflect the cultural situations in the 60’s and 70’s but also contribute in shaping the social values of the cultural situations.

scholarly journals Sinking in Quicksand: The Demise of Victorian High Culture in America 1870-1915

2008 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mitra Sharafi
Keyword(s):  
Mass Culture ◽  
Ethnic Origin ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Common Denominator ◽  
High Culture ◽  
Level Of Education ◽  
Modern Mass ◽  
The Cost ◽  
The Ideal

Today, the term Victorian implies snobbishness and rigidity. Our world, the result in part of a rebellion against Victorian formality and social hierarchy, celebrates the classless, the democratic, and the popular. It professes faith in the artistic judgment of all members of society regardless of ethnic origin, level of education or wealth. From the Victorian point of view, however, twentieth-century mass culture is accessible to all by appealing to the lowest common denominator; it is inclusive at the cost of a loss of education, refinement, and profundity. Turn-of-the-century America is the ideal subject for a study of the interaction between Victorian high culture and modern mass culture; the period from 1870 to 1915 was one of drastic cultural metamorphosis. Social change threatened the foundations of high culture and eventually killed it, but not without the unintentional help of the Victorians' own self-alienating behaviour.

Equality and Egalitarianism: Framing the Contemporary Debate

1994 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-26
Author(s):  
William B. Griffith
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Moral Reasons ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
Significant Harm ◽  
Historical Tradition ◽  
The Ideal

For really I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he....Col. Rainborough, in the Putney Debates (1647)The ideal of equality is one of the great themes in the culture of American public life…from the earliest colonial beginnings, equality has been a rallying cry, a promise, an article of national faith.K. Karst(1989)…[T]he error of believing that there are powerful moral reasons for caring about equality is far from innocuous. In fact this belief tends to do significant harm.H.Frankfurt (1987)Is equality the name of one coherent program or is it the name of a system of mutually antagonistic claims upon society and government?D. Raeetal. (1981)The purpose of this paper is to attempt to lay out a framework, both analytical and historical, in terms of which deeply conflicting and surprisingly complicated claims about equality and egalitarianism may be discussed. My aim is to help to make more intelligible what is at issue in contemporary disputes, and hence what kinds of arguments and evidence bear on and might illuminate these competing claims. I then exploit this conceptual framework to sketch a way of organizing some of the voluminous literature in the on-going debate about equality, that is, to bring into focus the dimension(s) in which the issues are being joined, and from which historical tradition an argument emerges, in hopes of clarifying these debates.

“...waterlogged somewhere in mid-Atlantic.” Why American Readers Need Intralingual Translation but don’t often Get it1

2008 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Denton
Keyword(s):  
Common Language ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Cultural Embeddedness

Abstract The quotation in the title is a comment on presumed American reception difficulties of British author Sue Townsend’s bestseller The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 (1982). A number of American reviews of the book and a questionnaire I used with American readers amply demonstrated a (partial) breakdown in transatlantic communication. Does this mean that American readers of British texts where informal register and cultural embeddedness predominate need some form of intralingual translation? As ‘speakers of the same language’ (albeit a pluricentric one) they do not often get it, in consideration of the widely held belief in a common language and culture. Thus, when shared British text producer-receptor pre-established knowledge schemata can no longer be consistently activated, Americans may well be at a disadvantage as compared with readers of interlingual translations.

scholarly journals Any Material Way

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 663-670
Author(s):  
Nathan K. Hensley
Keyword(s):  
George Eliot ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
The World ◽  
Raymond Williams ◽  
The Ideal

It is an honor to have the chance to discuss publicly Elaine Freedgood's work and its effects—“incalculably diffusive,” as they say in Middlemarch—in the world. George Eliot is an idealist and Elaine a materialist, which means that tracing Elaine's work and its work in the world, unlike that of the more pious and boring Dorothea Brooke, is possible. You can touch it. To do this labor of tracing will require thinking about Elaine's commitment to the category of the material, against the ideal and the idealized; it will also require thinking about the place that the conceptual or theoretical, but also the affective and communal, occupy for her, in relation to what Raymond Williams used to call concrete social processes. If Dorothea has a “finely tuned spirit,” with “many fine issues,” Elaine's allegiances push her away from finery, away too from “spirit.” Away, as she says in her reading of this very passage, from “mysterious, quietist, and … deeply sentimental form[s]” of consolation and toward “larger historical processes that cannot be domesticated.”

scholarly journals Navigating by the North Star: The Role of the ‘Ideal’ in John Stuart Mill's View of ‘Utopian’ Schemes and the Possibilities of Social Transformation

Utilitas ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 291-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen McCabe
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Individual Property ◽  
Social Reforms ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
Property Relations ◽  
The North ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Ideal

AbstractThe role of the ‘ideal’ in political philosophy is currently much discussed. These debates cast useful light on Mill's self-designation as ‘under the general designation of Socialist’. Considering Mill's assessment of potential property-relations on the grounds of their desirability, feasibility and ‘accessibility’ (disambiguated as ‘immediate-availability’, ‘eventual-availability’ and ‘conceivable-availability’) shows us not only how desirable and feasible he thought ‘utopian’ socialist schemes were, but which options we should implement. This, coupled with Mill's belief that a socialist ideal should guide social reforms (as the North Star guides mariners), reveals much more clearly the extent of his socialist commitments (even if he thought political economists would be concerned with forms of individual property for some time to come). Moreover, this framework for assessments of ‘ideal’ institutions makes a useful contribution to an ongoing contemporary debate.

scholarly journals The Image of a Soviet Woman as Depicted by Mass Media in the 1950s–1960s and Engraved in Social Memory (regional aspects)

2021 ◽  
pp. 59-68
Author(s):  
И.В. Богдашина
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Behavior Patterns ◽  
Political Criticism ◽  
Ideal Image ◽  
The Media ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Realistic Images ◽  
The Ideal

В статье раскрываются репрезентативные формы образа советской женщины на материалах нестоличного города. Возможность привлечения сведений радиопередач и эго-документов как малоизученных форм женской репрезентации позволяет автору выявить и сравнить идеализированный и реально существующий образ советской женщины 1950–1960-х годов. Средства массовой информации формировали идеологически одобренный женский портрет, являясь транслятором допустимых и запрещенных норм, которые жительницы города старались соблюдать. Превалирующий образ «женщины-работницы», активно вовлеченной в семейную и общественную жизнь, был недосягаем для «обычных» советских женщин. Несмотря на это, многие из них стремились занять лидирующие позиции хотя бы в одной из сфер. Несовпадение идеализированного и реально существующего женских образов влекло за собой критику со стороны власти и общественности. Опасение быть осужденной и желание обличать накладывали на женщин определенные каноны поведения, которые исподволь внедрялись массовой культурой. The article investigates the image of a Soviet woman as portrayed by provincial mass media. The article analyzes such underrated sources of reliable information as egodocuments and radio performances, which enables the author to compare the idealized image of a Soviet woman and the real image of a Soviet woman of the 1950s–1960s. Mass media created an ideologically “proper” image of a female worker who was actively involved in family and social life. Despite the fact that many “ordinary” Soviet women did their best to fully realize their potential in at least one sphere of life, they had no means to conform to the ideal image broadcast by the media. Due to the discrepancy between the ideal and realistic images, Soviet women often fell victim to social and political criticism. Gnawed by the fear of censure and the desire to condemn others, women were forced to acquire certain behavior patterns dictated by mass culture.

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