Aesthetic Salvation Or Enlightenment Deception-Investigated For Resons Of Benjamin And Adorno Controversy

Raymond Williams is one of the important figures of the British Marxist, and also one of the founders of the "Cultural Studies". Literary criticism, which is often used as an point of entry and argument of his culture studies, is an important part of his abundant works. This thesis briefly introduces Williams’s theory sources and his life and thoughts, and emphasizes three characteristics,"integrity","historic" and "practical". The research of the present thesis is carried out on the characteristics of Williams’s cultural criticism practice from the point of view of cultural theory.Williams believes that culture should include all kinds of lifestyles, denies the existence of "the public" and stresses the emotional structures of the whole era, focusing on digging emotional experience of the non-mainstream and reflecting the characteristics of "holistic". Williams attached importance to "the degree of integrity of the literary works to reflect the society" to evaluate a work, and he put forward two ideal literary styles of "Advanced Naturalistic drama" and "neo-realism novel".In the choice of criticism methods, Williams holds that language is a social practice and a particular way of human lifestyle with the thought of "cultural materialism" as a guide. On this basis, Williams believes that the change or continuation to use of the meanings of a language can directly see the real changes of the historical social structures. This method that focuses on historical exploration reveals a feature of "historic" Expressed in the specific literary criticism, Williams focuses on inspecting the literary style or a literary figure from the point of view of historical semantics. His "keyword" approach has an inspiring significance in the study of the relationship between society and literature.In addition, Williams inherits the tradition of Leavis’s practical criticism and emphasizes the realistic function of the literary works. He hopes to construct a new "cognitive community" by the functions of culture. In literary criticism, Williams pursues a practical and artistic unified "full play" and is very concerned about the emerging media, speaks highly of the practical function of emerging media, showing a respect for the characteristics of the "practical".In his life, Williams fought for the rights for those voices suppressed by the mainstream culture. He pursued the establishment of "cognitive Community that has a certain similarity with the building of our socialist harmonious society. Therefore, Williams’s literary criticism has an important reference to explore the Chinese morphology of the Marxist Literary Criticism.