Raymond Williams: Literature, Marxism and Cultural Materialism

by Higgins,John

• ISBN13: 9780415023443
• ISBN10: 0415023440
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-05-05
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Raymond Williams' prolific output is increasingly recognized as the most influential body of work on literary and cultural studies in the past fifty years. This book provides the most comprehensive study to date of the theoretical and historical context of Williams' thinking on literature, politics and culture. John Higgins traces Williams' intellectual trajectory from its beginnings in the literary criticism of the 1950s, across the development of a New Left cultural politics, to its culmination in the theory and practice of cultural materialism. Higgins vigorously challenges many of the received ideas concerning Williams' work. In so doing he offers a significant challenge and correction to many of the current representations of Williams' thought, and a powerful argument for renewed engagement with it.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	viii
Introduction	1	(3)
The tight place: Marxism or literature? 1947-50	4	(17)
Drama and the structure of feeling 1947-54	21	(25)
Culture and Communication 1950-62	46	(19)
Cambridge criticism 1962-73	65	(35)
Marxisms: contra Caudwell, against Althusser	100	(25)
Towards a cultural materialism 1977-81	125	(20)
Against the new conformism 1981-7	145	(24)
Conclusion	169	(9)
Notes	178	(25)
Bibliography	203	(21)
Index	224