Conceptual delimitation" "social work
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Theme 2: The Leavisites and T.S. Eliot
F.R Leavis and Q.D Leavis represented a new breed of critics at Cambridge. They helped to extend the debate on mass culture. F.R Leavis edited and contributed to a journal called Scrutiny, they followed the path Arnold opened up in criticism. English was an object of study.
These debates provided the Scrunity writers with an important source of social critique. As we shall see, in this criticism notions of “high” culture could be usefully deployed in the interests of both analalzing what seen as the damaging effects and tendencies of industrial capitalism and providing cultural antidotes to them.
The influence of Leavises and Scrunity is fundamental to the development of what exploring culture meant in English studies. Terry Eagleton has described the importance of the changes brought by the Leavises to students of Literature. Eagleton makes the point that in early 1920s it was by no means clear why English was worth studying but, by the 1930s, it had become a question of why was worth wasting your time on anything else. Such was the influence of Scrunity on English Studies that English students in England are “Leavisites”. This term sounds like they were inhabitants from another planet in which could be said to have been founded by Mathew Arnold, for the Leavis, as we shall see, disseminating an Arnoldian view of class and culture.
The Leavises established a view of culture which was divided into two main categories. On the one hand there were intellectual and creative works, or what might call “high” literary culture, and on the other, the pursuits and habits of what they referred to as ordinary or “common” people. The first definition was related to Arnold´s idea that intellectual, creative culture was something that to be protected and propagated by an unlighted minority. This mean that people like us either try to become part this selected group or accept that we are not worthy to have an opinion. However, this second category had further important distinction. The pursuits and habits of those like us, the “common” people, were judged according to whether they were the products of organic folk communities or the consequences of urban mass culture society. The later forms were seen as utterly corrupt. This was partly because the process of industrialization, which forced people to work in factories, were dehumanizing and partly because the kinds of habits and pursuits developed within the communities of industrial workers were considered utterly banal and demeaning.
F.R Leavis and Q.D Leavis represented a new breed of critics at Cambridge. They helped to extend the debate on mass culture. F.R Leavis edited and contributed to a journal called Scrutiny, they followed the path Arnold opened up in criticism. English was an object of study.
These debates provided the Scrunity writers with an important source of social critique. As we shall see, in this criticism notions of “high” culture could be usefully deployed in the interests of both analalzing what seen as the damaging effects and tendencies of industrial capitalism and providing cultural antidotes to them.
The influence of Leavises and Scrunity is fundamental to the development of what exploring culture meant in English studies. Terry Eagleton has described the importance of the changes brought by the Leavises to students of Literature. Eagleton makes the point that in early 1920s it was by no means clear why English was worth studying but, by the 1930s, it had become a question of why was worth wasting your time on anything else. Such was the influence of Scrunity on English Studies that English students in England are “Leavisites”. This term sounds like they were inhabitants from another planet in which could be said to have been founded by Mathew Arnold, for the Leavis, as we shall see, disseminating an Arnoldian view of class and culture.
The Leavises established a view of culture which was divided into two main categories. On the one hand there were intellectual and creative works, or what might call “high” literary culture, and on the other, the pursuits and habits of what they referred to as ordinary or “common” people. The first definition was related to Arnold´s idea that intellectual, creative culture was something that to be protected and propagated by an unlighted minority. This mean that people like us either try to become part this selected group or accept that we are not worthy to have an opinion. However, this second category had further important distinction. The pursuits and habits of those like us, the “common” people, were judged according to whether they were the products of organic folk communities or the consequences of urban mass culture society. The later forms were seen as utterly corrupt. This was partly because the process of industrialization, which forced people to work in factories, were dehumanizing and partly because the kinds of habits and pursuits developed within the communities of industrial workers were considered utterly banal and demeaning.