On The Literary View Of Raymond Williams

Raymond Williams was a literary critic,a cultural theorist,a Marxist,and so on.It is regrettable,however,that Williams’s great academic contribution stands in stark contrast to the academic study of him:On the one hand,both in the West and at home,compared with the descendants of Eagleton,Jameson,etc.On the other hand,the academic research on Williams has mainly focused on his cultural theory,the study of his literary theory started late,has not yet achieved systematic and in-depth research results.Therefore,the purpose of this paper is to make a systematic exposition of Williams’s literary theory against the background of his cultural theory.This article is divided into four chapters:The first chapter introduces the theoretical resources of Williams’s literary ideas.It begins with a brief review of Raymond Williams,s life and,in particular,the influence of his working class background on his theoretical orientation.As a student of Leavis,Williams abandoned Leavis’s elitism and total rejection of industrial civilization He inherited Leavisfs radical humanism,moral concern in literary studies,and his awareness of capitalist industrial civilization.For historical and practical reasons,the Raymond Williams accepted Marxist thought.Williams consciously reflected on and severely criticized the Mechanical Marxist tradition,interpreting and interpreting the key words in Marxism with distinctive personal characteristics,and constructing his theory on the basis of Marxism Materialism advanced the theory of cultural production,which further developed the Marxist theory of artistic production.The second chapter outlines Williams’s literary theory from three aspects:literary essence,Literary Form and literary function.Williams first reviews the development of the historical meaning of the literary concept and its causes,and holds that literature is not an independent concept,but a developing historical continuum,and literature is a social and historical category.Secondly,by emphasizing the diversity of writing forms,Williams proposed that literature should expand its scope and scope,and argued that the form of literature should be examined from the perspective of social history,and that there was no fixed and universal form of literature.Finally,in Williams’s view,literature and art can not only bring people aesthetic pleasure,but more importantly,literature and art contain the power of material change,can resist cultural hegemony.Williams’s literary view carries his political intention,and the political theme is always hidden in his literary research,with a specific political mission and practical concern.The third chapter analyzes the theoretical characteristics of Williams,s literary view.First,the practical standpoint of literary cognition.This section expounds it from two aspects:the material practicality of language and the material dimension of Literary Form.Second,the social and historical dimension of literary thinking.Williams stressed that literature should be placed in the social historical practice,in the social historical activities of literature can obtain meaning.Third,the systematic integrity of literary point of view.Under the influence of his cultural view,Williams’s literary view shows the theoretical characteristics of wholeness.First of all,the integrity of classical literature and popular literature is a whole,there is no absolute boundary.Secondly,the wholeness is embodied in Williams’s understanding of the essence of literature.Literature is a description of the whole social experience and life style of human beings.Its objects include social institutions,customs,habits of thought,intention,intelligence and imagination.Finally,wholeness is also reflected in Williams’s consideration of various aspects of social mechanism permeating into his literary studies,and he always pays attention to the ideological nature of literature.The Fourth Chapter summarizes the unique value and limitation of Williams’s literary view.The theoretical value of Williams’s literary view is as follows:first,Williams deconstructs the literary view of Essentialism.Secondly,Williams’s literary research breaks through the elite position,extends the literature’s tentacles to the popular literature,puts the literary research in the broad social space to carry on the inspection.Finally,Williams’s study of literature shows multiple perspectives,not limited to a single disciplinary system,and an interdisciplinary perspective of literature.Williams’s view of literature,however,is not blameless.First,Williams’s construction of literary theory and his practice of literary criticism were based on his understanding of culture,to the extent that Williams Apriori used the theory of materialism to define literature.Secondly,Williams stressed the material characteristics of literature,that literature is the product of social history,is a reflection of social material activities.In other words,Williams paid more attention to the external attributes of literature,thus ignoring the internal characteristics of literature.In the end,Williams exaggerates the political function of Culture and weakens the importance of political economy criticism,so his view of literature(and his cultural view)is inevitably tinged with radical idealism.