A Study Of Richard Hoggart’s Mass Culture Theory In The Uses Of Literacy

Richard Hoggart is one of the founding fathers of Britain Cultural Studies. Unlike his elitist predecessors, Hoggart switched his research interest from canons to mass culture. With the help of his own working-class childhood experience, he did a delicate research on the Britain working-class culture of1930s and composed his masterpiece The Uses of Literacy. In this book he discusses the features, nature and influence of mass culture, and raises the question how to face mass culture in the period when traditional culture is declining. Together with Raymond Williams’Culture and Society and E.P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working-class, The Uses of Literacy is widely considered as the book that set the basis of Cultural Studies.Hoggart’s mass culture theory, being discussed in this thesis, mainly consists of three parts:1. The nostalgia of working-class culture;2. Critique of the imposition of mass culture by the culture industries, for it causes "unbending the springs of action" among people;3. Emphasis on "resilience" and "critical literacy" by which, as Hoggart thought, people can get rid of the corrosion of mass culture.This thesis, taking The Uses of Literacy as the penetrating point, studies Richard Hoggart’s mass culture theory. It concerns factors like Hoggart’s adult education experience, his conversion from literature study to Cultural Studies, the influence of Elitism to him, etc. It reflects the representations of his mass culture theory, including mass culture in Hoogart’s opinion, mass culture and working-class, the nostalgia in Hoggart’s culture ideas, emphasis on the "resilience" of working-class and "critical literacy". And it explores the value and limits of Hoggart’s mass culture theory, especially the inspirations to contemporary Cultural Studies.