Raymond Williams - The Critic

Raymond Williams - the Welsh academic novelist and critic taught for many years as
professor of drama at Cambridge. He was one of the leading theoretician of the British New
Left after the Second World War. The New Left was a broad political movement mainly in
the 1960's and 70's consisting of activities in the Western world who campaigned for a
range of social issues such as Civil and political rights and gender relations. In Britain it was
predominantly an intellectual tendency. The New Left is distinct from orthodox Marxism and
mainstream social democracy. It opposed the use of nuclear weapons and the concept of
conflicting superpower but is known as Cold War bipolarity.

New left is where disgruntled communists or independent socialists, or young radicals who
were anti-colonialist but always sympathetic to the problems of third world countries. The
thinkers of New Left made ground working contribution to the analysis of culture and
communication. Departing from Marxist orthodoxy, they were convinced that new
conditions of consumer capitalism required fresh thinking. Cultural studies emerge in
England in the 1950s and 60s as part of engagement with the New Left. Gradually, it
developed into a lively and diverse international and intellectual field.

Stuart Hall, Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams were its founders. Stuart Hall and
Richard Hoggart were British cultural theorists. In course of time, it got established in the US
and other parts of the globe. It later came to be known as Birmingham School of Cultural
Studies. It is the focal point of interdisciplinary studies, research and development of critical
theory. Cultural studies has effects on the study of literature and has challenged the idea of
canonical literature and affected the way literary texts are read and theorized. It introduced
interdisciplinary perspectives and sought to terrorize that role of literature in society in new
ways and to look at literary texts in relation to cultural institutions and cultural history text
forms and practices. As an intellectual with a working class background, Williams had no
difficulty in associating himself with the new left and the cultural studies which he called
Cultural Materialism. Along with Richard Hoggart he critiqued the prevailing literary
tradition. They attempted to erase the hierarchical separation between the authenticated
and validated taste of upper class and unrefrained culture of masses. The serious study of
popular culture resulted in the redefining of relationship to power and authority. Williams’s
important critical works are - Culture and Society (1958), The Long Revolution (1961),
Modern Tragedy (1965), The English novel From Dickens to Lawrence (1970) The Country
and the City (1973), Television: Technology and Cultural Form (1974) and Maxim and
Literature (1977). He also wrote two novels - Border Country (1960) and Second
Generations (1964).

In culture and society, Williams explores how the notion of culture developed in the West,
especially Great Britain, from the 18th to the 20th century. The book has overturned
conventional, social and historical thinking about culture. It argues that the notion of culture
developed in response to the Industrial Revolution and the political changes it brought in its
wake.

The Long Revolution deals with revolution in culture, which Williams sees as unfolded
alongside the Democratic Revolution and Industrial Revolution. Williams led the way in
recognizing the importance of the growth of the popular press, the standard of English and
the reading public in English speaking culture and in the Western culture as a whole. The
book is a sort of prescription for Britain in the 1960s. Williams defines culture as not just art
and clothes, but as structure of feeling the way people thought and felt about things the
general sense of what it was like to live in a time. It is about the ways the individual can
relate to society as a whole. Williams corrects the popular misconception that working class
are inherently less intelligent than the rich and that they can produce only low quality arts
books, movies and music. He thinks that it is unjust to attribute popular press, magazines
and newspapers to the poor taste of the masses. Instead, the pop press has been affected
by changes in printing, distribution, taxation, advertising and consolidation of ownership.
More than anything else proliferation of low-quality books, movies, music, newspaper, etc.
is not the fault of the inherent that taste of masses but a side-effect of ownership of cultural
institutions by speculators who are only interested in making money. Quality artist cannot
compete with the scale of distribution that large companies produce. Long Revolution is a
sequel to Culture and Society.

Modern Tragedy examines the ideas and ideologies which have influenced the production
and Analysis of tragedy. Williams looks at tragedy both in terms of literary tradition and in
relation to the tragedies of modern society of evolution and disorder and of individual
experience.

The English novel from Dickens to Lawrence presents a brilliant study of the English novel in
the 1840’s a period of rapid social change brought on by Industrial Revolution, the struggle
for democratic reform, and growth of cities and towns. These changes, Williams argues,
prompted novelists of the time to explore new forms of writing. He brings out the genius of
Dickens, the powerful originality of the Bronte sisters, and the passionate vision of George
Eliot.

In The Country and the City is a book of cultural analysis, Williams’s analyses images of the
country and the city in English literature since the 16th century. He relates these images to
the development of the capitalist Society in England. He debunks the notion of rural life as
simple, natural, and unadulterated. The cities depicted in English novels as symbol of
capitalist production, labour, and exploitation. The country represented Eden while the city
became the hub of modernity. Chapters about literature alternate with chapters of social
history.
In Television: Technology and Cultural Form Williams defended his visions
against technological determinism focusing on how the social has a prevalence over the
technology when it comes to the development of the human process.

The book Marxism and Literature is mainly meant for specialist but it also sets out Williams
own approach to cultural studies. Williams’s brand of cultural studies developed in Britain as
a reaction against specific disciplines and political positions. It questioned liberal humanism
and its basic tenants, culture, civilization, tradition and also orthodox Marxism.

Culture, civilization and tradition in English studies stretches back to Arnold in 1860s and
reached its high point in the work of F. R Leavis. Leavis through his journal ‘Scrutiny’
endeavoured to privilege canonical literature over other fictional writing and non-literary
cultural forms and practices. It was a tradition that ascribed to literature the power to shape
individuals and instil in them shade understandings and social values. Marx and F. R. Leavis
were the major intellectual influences upon Williams. He has combined and modified them
in an appealing way. Williams’s insistence that all human activities communal is clearly
Marxist but his attempt to seek in life and art, a reconciliation of the claims of individual and
Society is based on liberal humanism. Like Leavis Williams’s critical approach to literature
assumes a close connection between art and life. But why Leavis espoused and elitist
concept of culture and was hostile in leading with the mass media. Williams has been more
objective in analysing such phenomenon.

Critical Summary of Raymond Williams’s Essay

Realism and Contemporary Novel

Realism and Contemporary Novel is chapter 7 of the Long Revolution. Williams’s aim in
writing the essay was to discuss the existing variations in realism to offer his own views of
the ways in which the modern novel has developed and to discuss the possible new
meaning of realism. The most common definition of realism was in terms of an ordinary
contemporary everyday reality as opposed to traditionally heroic romantic or legendary
subjects. In the period since the renaissance, the ordinary everyday contemporary realities
have been associated with the rising Middle class. The adjective ‘realistic’ was not used for
such novels in those days. They were called ‘Domestic Novels’.

Realism came to represent a revolt against an ordinary contemporary everyday reality in the
selection of matter. It focused on the unpleasant and sordid aspects of reality and was
readily accepted by the progressive and revolutionary movements. Williams briefly touches
upon naturalism and defines it as the unnecessarily faithful portrayal of offensive incidence
and as a banner of revolutionary school. He takes a look at the 19 th century view of
naturalism as opposed to supernaturalism. In the 20 century, Realism meant fidelity to
psychological reality irrespective of whether the content was drawn from the ordinary, the
contemporary and the everyday. The essential realism is related to the psychological
experience.

Socialist realism that involved at the literary device in the Soviet Union is characterized by
four elements: (these terms are Russian) - ‘narodnost’, ‘tipicnost’, ‘ideinost’ and ‘partynost’.
‘Narodnost’ is an effect technical though also an expression of the spirit. It represents
simplicity and clarity which was essential to communicate the Socialist ideas to the readers.
‘Ideinost’ and ‘Partynost’ refer to the ideological content and partisan affiliations of such
realism. ‘Narodnost’ is a restatement of an ordinary technical meaning of realism. ‘Ideinost’
and ‘Partynost’ are developments of the ideological and revolutionary attitudes. Much of
the stern popular literature is in fact ‘bourgeois realism’ with its own version of ‘ideinost’
and ‘partynost’ and with its ordinary adherence to ‘narodnost’. But the problem broadens in
relation to the element ‘tipicnost’. Realism is often defined as typical characters in typical
situations. ‘Tipicnost’ is a development of this definition which radically affects the whole
question of realism. Typically is not that which is frequently encountered. The truly typical is
based on comprehension of the loss and perspectives of future Social Development. The
concept of ‘tipicnost’ alters realism from a sense of direct reproduction of observed reality.
Realism becomes a principal organized selection.

The 19th century tradition of realism has vanished from Modern European fiction. There is
still treatment of the ordinary everyday experience. There is also a preference for the
offensive and the unpleasant material as theme of novel. Most descriptions are still realistic.
But what actually distinguishes Modern Novel is that it has adopted psychological realism.
Everyday ordinary reality is differently conceived and new techniques have being developed
to describe this kind of reality. Still Williams feels that modern fiction lacks the realistic
touch which has created a formal gap in it.

Williams proceeds to classify Modern Realist novel as ‘Social novel’ and ‘Personal novel’. In
the Social novel there may be accurate observation and description of the general life, the
aggregation; in the Personal novel there may be accurate observation and description of
persons, the units. But each lacks a dimension for the way of life that forms the substance of
the novel is neither aggregation nor unit but a whole indivisible process.

The social novel is further the divided into - the ‘Descriptive Social novel’, the ‘Documentary’
and the ‘Social Formula novel’. The Descriptive Social novel gives priority to the general way
of life, a particular social or working community, there are characters in it and sometime
they might be carefully drawn too. We turn to such books if you want to know about life in a
mining town, in a university or in a merchant ship. There are well written novels under this
category. The problem with these novel is that the characters are near illustrations of the
way of life but the persons are of absolute interesting themselves and yet seen as parts of a
whole way of living in the really good realist novel of this variety. Even there the social
descriptive function is the shaping priority. The other kind of social novel - Social Formula –
attempts the materialization of a formula about society. A particular pattern is abstracted
from the sum of experience and the society is created from this pattern. It is always the
contemporary society that is being written about. They are Formula Novels – A Social
Formula. Examples are ‘The Brave New World’ by Aldous Huxley (1932) which was set in a
futuristic world state. The novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive
technology and psychological manipulation. The other one is ‘1984’ written by George
Orwell (1948). It is a novel about the dangers of totalitarianism. So both these were called
Dystopian Fantasies where we get a rather exaggerated, horrible picture about the future.
Patterns are taken from contemporary society are materialized as a whole in another time
or place in these novels. English Formula Novels are considered lively because they are
about lively social feelings but what they lack is the substantial society and correspondingly
substantial persons.

Similarly Personal Novel can be divided into ‘Documentary’ and ‘Formula’. The personal
descriptive novels describe carefully and subtly selected personal relationships. E.M.
Forster’s ‘A Passage to India’ written in 1924 set against the backdrop of the British Raj and
the Indian Independence Movement in the 1920’s – It is an example of this type of personal
novel. A society, a general way of living is presented as a highly personalized landscape.
Social settings relate not to actual ways of life but to the needs of the characters and their
emotional problems.

In social Descriptive Novel, the characters are aspects of society. In Personal Descriptive
novel society is aspect of the characters. The novel of Personal Formula as in the novel of
Social Formula, a particular pattern is abstracted from the sum of experience not societies
but human individuals are created from this pattern. It leads to a new type of novel ‘the
fiction of special pleading’. They take only one person seriously. A world is actualized in one
man's census taken as it is lived. Examples are James Joyce’s ‘Portrait of the Artist As a
Young Man’ (1916) it is a novel written in the modernist style. It traces the religious and
intellectual awakening of Young Stephen Dedalus, the fictional alter ego of Joyce. And other
is Joyce's ‘Ulysses’ (1922) which is considered one of the most important works of modern
literature in which Joyce has perfected the technique known as ‘Stream of Consciousness’.

The truly creative effort of our time is a struggle for relationships of a whole kind and it is
possible to see it as both personal and social. It is about the practical learning of extending
relationships. Realism in its great tradition shows in detail that vital interpenetration of idea
into feeling and person into community. That is what we need in our divided times. In the
highest realism, society is seen in fundamentally personal terms and persons through
relationships in fundamentally social terms. It will be ideally the stuff of realist novel. New
Realism will be different from the tradition and we will comprehend the discoveries in
personal realism which are the main 20th century achievements. They are based on modern
discoveries in perception and communication. The old realism was static and passive and
depended on the theory of natural seeing which is now impossible. In those days we could
just open our eyes see the common world and record its reality. Now it is realised that we
literally create the world we see. The human creation of the material world is dynamic and
active. Man lives through his perceptual world which is a human interpretation of the
material world outside him. This was thought to be the basis for the rejection of realism as
only a personal vision was possible. But reality is that which human beings make common
by work or language. Thus in the very acts of perception and communication, this practical
interaction of what is personally seen interpreted and organised and what can be socially
recognised is richly and subtly manifested. Here is the clue we seek on our thinking about
individual and society. Art is one of the highest forms for establishing reality. The
revolutionary concept about what reality is calls forth a new realism which demands the
balance between the substantial society and the substantial person. But this creative
tension is lacking in contemporary novel though it turns out to be the cornerstone of the
new realism.