Novel And Culture: A Study Of Raymond Williams' Novel Criticism

Raymond Williams was a famous British cultural theorist and literary critic in the twentieth Century.He was also a pioneer and founder of British Cultural Studies.His academic career began with literature,his later research turned to the cultural field,but he never forgot the literature for his academic enlightenment.And in literature,he especially has a passion for novels.He thinks novel is the only proper from to adjust the conflict of reality.The novel is not only the object of creation,but also the target of criticism for Williams.Although Williams himself had little success in his novels,he was always interested in the development of English novels.He set up courses about British Novel in Cambridge and assembled lecture notes into The English Novel:From Dickens to Lawrence,which is also a collection of his novel critical theories.He also presided over a series of novel workshops.There are no lack of insights about Williams' novel criticism in Culture and Society,The Long Revolution,The Country and The City in The Modern Novel,Marxism and Literature.In 1971,a special treatise on George Orwell Orwell was published.The results of Williams' novel research are so rich,and the passion of the novel creation has never faded.So it seems that if the research about Williams lacks his novel criticism research,it is undoubtedly very regrettable.Therefore,based on Williams' novel criticism as the research object,this paper makes a deep analysis to Williams' novel criticism which is corresponding to his cultural thoughts through close reading of The English Novel:From Dickens to Lawrence,The Country and The City in The Modern Novel,Orwell and other important works about novel criticism.Williams' novel research has always been carried out under the framework of his cultural theory.In other words,Williams' novel view and cultural view are deep fit.He regards culture as a whole way of life,and emphasizes that novel should create and judge the nature of a whole way of life.He devoted himself to construct a common culture of all the people created and shared,this is the premise of establishing a community,but also stressed that the novel needs a real community,the person in community is together with each other not only through one relationship,but through many kinds of relationships.This view is also in line with his cultural view of “unity of individual and society”.He pays more attention to the important role of the structure of feeling in cultural analysis,and believes that the novel must deal with the structure of feeling of a society so as to present a real sense of common life.He appeals that culture should involve in the reality,it can offer advices for social problems on the basis of a comprehensive understanding of reality.Meanwhile he also believes that the novel is more effective in reflecting the reality than other texts.In a word,Williams' cognition of novel can be summed up in “new realism”,that is,the novel is the perception of the reality and the understanding of the relationship.It does not focus on some sort of second order association with reality and a certain patterns of composition as traditional realism does,but a kind of eclectic theory.Williams advocates the integration of traditional realism and Modernism,advocates the unity of individual and society.He also requires the novel should grasp the essence of the social reality and all kinds of zigzag relationships on the whole,so as to play a positive role in the process of social transformation and social construction,thus the novel can promote social progress as a whole.Williams develops his research on English novels in Nineteenth Century by discussing Dickens,George Eliot and Hardy in detail.Williams believes the greatness of Dickens lies in the creation of a new type of novel,this novel reveals a new social reality,the experience of urban mass culture and its response to this decisive experience.Dickens describes the urban life of his time with dramatic approach and creates the relationships in a complex society consciously,this is the unique feature of his novel.Williams attributes George Eliot's genius to the combination of personal desires and social development.The old villages in Eliot's writings are not only pastoral comfort and tranquility,but also rural chaos that we have neglected.The changes in social and economic relations have undoubtedly entered the British countryside,which has a decisive impact on the whole way of life and individual behavior of the countryside.This way of combining individual and society is appreciated by Williams.And the precious value of Hardy is that,emotionally,he regards the old tradition of rural England as the hometown and hometown complex experienced by him,and intellectually,he can examine and explore the old tradition in a changing era.Hardy shows not only the suffering of people in the transformation of the rural society,but also makes a more conscious study of the personal experience in the development of the whole society,which deeply corresponds to Williams' view of novels.It is a turning point for English novels at the end of the Nineteenth Century and early Twentieth Century,English novels split into two roads,namely,personal novels and social novels.The main reason for splitting is the fact that external reality and all kinds of relations have undergone essential changes.In the face of this situation,Williams believes that novelists should use various effective forms to construct life and create the structural form of the novel under the pressure and structure of positive and continuous experience.Williams uses this as a criterion to examine the English novels in Twentieth Century.Williams believes that Conrad's marine jungle novels show the importance of human nature,morality,loyalty and tradition in the era of gradual materialization,but the community in the novels is only a special community in the abstract and literal sense,which is far from the real and complete social system.Lawrence in Williams' works is presented with two kinds of identity.As a social critic,Lawrence's most important contribution is the concept to construct the community,which is far more valuable than his concept of sexual instinct.And this is more fit to the concept of common culture and community construction of Williams.As a novelist,Lawrence's achievements and limitations depend on whether the novel has depicted a knowable community,and whether the various relationships in the community are rich and clear.Williams' attitude to Orwell has undergone a transition from sympathy to hostility,mainly because Orwell's understanding of the complex integrity of human society is too simple,which is reflected in the absence of the “whole” and “relationship” in the novel.In addition,Orwell's political position,especially the prejudice against the working class and socialism,also makes Williams unhappy.For a comprehensive evaluation of any ideological characters are cannot do without investigation of his ideological origins and legacies.Therefore,the paper also discusses the academic inherent relationship between Williams and Leavis,Williams and Eagleton,and compares their similarities and differences in novel criticism theory.Cambridge school tradition represented by Leavis and Marxism are two lingering thought resources of Williams' academic research.For novel criticism,Leavis starts from defending the elite culture position,especially emphasizing on the novelists' ability of in-depth observation of life and profound moral concern in the novel,in order to improve the public recognition,so as to protect and extend the British cultural tradition.Williams always holds high the banner of democratic culture,and emphasizes the importance of the knowable community construction in the novel,so as to find a feasible way for the establishment of the known community in the real world.Eagleton is Williams' favourite student.Eagleton's novel view also has a tendency of realism.But he is impatient of realism obviously.After all,he believes that the purpose of the novel is to change life rather than imitate life,and that is why he does not accept the humanitarian capitalist world that Leavis and Williams agree with.Unlike Williams,Eagleton has always attached great importance to the techniques and forms of the novel.And as a firm Marxist,Eagleton pays attention to the words on the page in the process of novel criticism.In addition,he also pays attention to the historical forces which construct these words,and he always does not forget the relations of political power behind these words.