Socially conscious criticism; Marxism &

Feminism,

Here am I, Here are you,But what does it meanAnd what are we going to do?W.H. Auden

The 1930s

Individual commitment to the collective cause

“Spain”; “Journey to War” – support for the political action

Individual act of solidarity Moral responsibility Collective cause Individual/collective The role of “choice”

W. H. Auden

Against the Classical theatre of the day W.H. Auden – Group Theatre – new poetic

form - active from 1932 to 1939 W.H. Auden, both alone and in collaboration

with Stephen Spender, T.S. Eliot and other contemporary writers.

Auden-”political prophet of the Left in England”

The 1930s - Theatre

The Dance of Death, 1934 Dance, Music, Communication: Theatre is popular,

simple and easily understandable. Participation of the Audience Manifest: The subject of drama.. is the Commonly

Known, the universally familiar stories of the society or generation in which it is written… Dramatic characters are simplified, easily recognizablele and over life-size (Auden).

Part of the social life and the political and ideological discourse

Similarity with the epich theatre of Bertolt Breht

Political Theatre – Group Theatre

The Old Dilemma: Ethics vs. Aestetic Abandoned: Pure aesthetic criticism and

formalism of the New critics; Individualism of the New humanists

F. R. Leavis – Literature in the social context Text is a social event, not “words on page” Social & historical aspect of literature „Sociology and Literature“ – criticism must

explore both human and social aspect of work.

Literary Criticism of the 30s

Scientific criticism like Arnold’s New evaluation of the literary tradition in the

light of high ethical, intellectual and artistic standards

Elitist, but ethically conscious criticism Literature is superior to other social discourses Journal Scrutiny, 1932-1953 “Sociology and Literature”, Subject of criticism: man, society and

civilization and the context of the work

F.R.Leavis – humanism, individualism and the socially conscious criticism

William Morris, arts and crafts; against mass production and British Imperialism.

Morris: Socialist League, equality and abundance

esthetic democracy Severity, restrictive style of living “Plain lifers” Bloomsbury G.B. Shaw, Fabian Society, Manifesto, 1894. Openly Marxist views political activity. Care for poor people

Early socialism

They do not want the simple life, nor the aesthetic life [...] What they do dislike and despise and are ashamed of is poverty [...] To ask them to fight for the difference between the Christmas number of the Illustrated London News and the Kelmscott Chaucer is silly: they prefer the News. (Preface, Major Barbara)

G.B. Shaw –reason for the failure of socialist ideas

Socialist reform: transformation of society on the economic grounds

Fabian Society

Shaw was like a machine, producing ideas and opinions at a constant rate over seventy years, stretching and pulling the mind of his audience, tugging at its conscience, trying its nerve and tweaking its prejudices. He was one of the master intellectuals of his age, a prince in the universe of progressive thought.

Gareth Griffith

Political ideas inspired his writing Themes: Socialist ideas, war policy, feminist

movement, fascism, class ideology, etc. Economics are fundamental in politics […]

Unless you build on that, all your superstructure will be rotten.

G. B. Shaw – Drama of Ideas; literary criticism

For all Shaw’s audacious discussions, there is not one character in all his eighteen plays who infringes the conventions in practice (Rebeka West)

Feminism – pacifism Shaw: “Common Sense about the War” Shaw is...in no danger whatever of being

lynched. He is in far more danger of having the Iron Cross conferred upon him by the Kaiser in recognition of his attempt to supplement the activities of the official German Press Bureau (Pankhurst, 1914).

Shaw & Feminism

Non- academic philosopher of socialism Ethical socialism Life mission: struggle against brutality and

oppression Officer in Burma: I became pro-Socialist

more out of disgust with the way the poorer section of the industrial workers were oppressed and neglected than out of any theoretical admiration for a planned society.

George Orwell (1903–1950)

Socialist idea: [A]s the only proper basis for the society of the future … he believed in the possibility of progress towards an ideal community of the future, and he thought that such a utopia could only be socialist in character (White).

Against totalitarianism: Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it (Essays).

George Orwell

I was conscious of an immense weight of guilt that I had got to expiate. […] I felt that I had got to escape not merely from imperialism but from every form of man's dominion over man. I wanted to submerge myself, to get right down among the oppressed, to be one of them and on their side against the tyrants (Wigan Pier 185).

Office in Burma: Wigan Pier

In a peaceful age I might have written ornate or merely descriptive books, and might have remained almost unaware of my political loyalties. As it is I have been forced into becoming a sort of pamphleteer. First I spent five years in an unsuitable profession (the Indian Imperial Police, in Burma), and then I underwent poverty and the sense of failure. This increased my natural hatred of authority and made me for the first time fully aware of the existence of the working classes, giving me some understanding of the nature of imperialism... Then came Hitler, the Spanish Civil War, etc.

Orwell: “Why I Write”

Incoherent, sentimental Idealistic Brotherhood, freedom and equality Not a systematic philosopher: without real

understanding of social dynamics Western societies are unethical – colonial

domination

Orwell: Ethical Socialism

Orwell: Critical distance towards all ideologies: Marxism, Comunism, fascism

I became pro-Socialist more out of disgust with the way the poorer section of the industrial workers were oppressed and neglected than out of any theoretical admiration for a planned society.

As for the philosophic side of Marxism the pea and thimble trick with those three mysterious entities, thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, I have never met a working man who had the faintest interest in it.

Independent thinker

Nationalization of land, mines, railways, banks and major industries.

Limitation of incomes, on such a scale that the highest tax-free income in Britain does not exceed the lowest by more than ten to one.

Reform of the educational system along democratic lines.

Immediate Dominion status for India, with power to secede when the war is over.

Formation of an Imperial General Council, in which the coloured peoples are to be represented.

Declaration of formal alliance with China, Abyssinia and all other victims of the Fascist powers.

Orwell’s Vision: The Lion & the Unicorn, The English Revolution, II

Triumph of totalitarian ideologies Capitalist society – unjust: Money is what

God used to be. Good and evil have no meaning any longer except failure and success.

1984; The Animal Farm

A Socialist is not obliged to believe that human society can actually be made perfect, but almost any Socialist does believe that it could be a great deal better than it is at present, and that most of the evil that men do results from the warping effects of injustice and inequality. The basis of Socialism is humanism

Socialist society

Critical thinking: in accordance with his social philosophy – equality. democracy

About Dickens About Swift About Kipling About Milton, etc. His mission: to influence the society to

move into the right direction.

Literary Criticism

Novelty Rationalism Novel of Ideas Ethical dilemmas Scientific procedures in literature. Mission of literature: to serve social cause

Aldous Huxley, 1894-1963

On the Margin, 1923 Vulgarity in Literature, 1930

Essays

Favorable criticism of realists: Balzac, Arnold, Galsworthy.

Aristocracy Criticism: Proust –- lack of the sense of reality &

social touch: “There is a strange moral poverty about this book. Proust fails to realize the full social import of his experiences. He is exclusively concerned with their capacity for giving pleasure to his keen and sensitive mind.”

Criticism: Romanticism – individualism and lack of technological sense

Literary Criticism

Appreciation of the realists: Balzac, Arnold, Galsworthy.

Appreciation: Elizabethan poets – material and spiritual

Appreciation Shaw & the Fabians - [I]f, instead of just applauding Mr. Shaw's plays and chuckling over his prefaces, we had also paid some serious attention to his teaching, what remains of our civilization might not now be lying under sentence of death.

Huxley: favourable judgement

Detecting feminine voice Background: patriarchal family: His life

would have entirely ended mine. What would have happened? No writing, no books;--inconceivable.“

Unable to go to the University Bloomsbery ideas Totality of experience could be grasped only

through intuition - different perception

Virginia Woolf: feminism

Edwardians and Georgians: realist literature/patriarchal society

We range Edwardians and Georgians into two camps; Mr. Wells, Mr. Bennett, and Mr. Galsworthy I will call the Edwardians; Mr. Forster, Mr. Lawrence, Mr. Strachey, Mr. Joyce, and Mr. Eliot I will call the Georgians... Mr. Arnold Bennett says[…] that it is only if the characters are real that the novel has any chance of surviving. Otherwise, die it must. But, I ask myself, what is reality? And who are the judges of reality? A character may be real to Mr. Bennett and quite unreal to me. …

Realist text is incomplete, insufficient representation of reality – necessity to include female experience

Roots of Woolf’s feminism

Literature: political, economic & social context The role of economic (in)dependence of women:

“the right to speak [her] mind”. Economic dependence is the main hindrance on

female road of creativity Women: long-term silence / material and non-

material limitations Social & economic context of female writing Reevaluation of traditional texts „A Room of One’s Own“, 1929. “Three Guines”, 1938.

Early Feminism: Virginia Woolf

The intellect seems to predominate and the other fascilities of the mind harden and become barren

Here then was I (call me Mery Beton, Mery Seton, Mery Carmichael - or by any name you please, it is not of any importance).....

Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of men at twice its natural size

The glories of all our wars would be unknown. Judith lives on in you and me, and in many other

women who are not here tonight,...

Virginia Woolf

male/female perception Stable/unstable - Identity, time, social

values Language – female/male experience Male perspective: Logocentrism Female perspective: Intuition

Gender - difference

Harmony: „unity of the mind“she would certainly have gone crazed, shot herself or ended her days in some lonely cottage.

Coleridge perhaps meant this when he said that a great mind is androgenous

Possibilities of change

Writing into literature what Shakespeare and his tradition left out

The space where a female experience could be expressed

“A language of her own”

Female Voice – a room of her own

Judith lives on in you and me, and in many other women who are not here tonight…

A metaphor of silenced female voices A personification of female inferiority – from

bullying to overprotection She would certainly have gone crazed, shot

herself or ended her days in some lonely cottage.

William and Judith are one - androgenous psyche

Judith Shakespeare – fictive sister

Female Voice: what history and literary canon has left out

Why is the harmony important: “The intellect seems to predominate and the other fascilities of the mind harden and become barren.”

Redefinition of the Literary Canon

But don't you agree with me that the Edwardians, from 1895 to 1914, made a pretty poor show. By the Edwardians I mean Shaw, Wells, Galsworthy, the Webbs, Arnold Bennett. […] There's not a single living writer (English) I respect: so you see, I have to read Russian.

How does one come by one's morality? Surely by reading the poets.

Politics & Ethics

Far from collectivism Farther still from the political commitment

Woolf, Shaw & Morris

Political Pacifist Feminist Feminist Insight into politics Said to carry a codified feminist message

Three Guines, 1939

Criticism of the bourgeoisie values and esthetics Literature examined in view of class struggle Christopher Caudwell Walter Benjamin Theodor Adorno Raymond Williams Terry Eagleton Art is the production of goods like any other production Art is a product of economic necessity and social

practice Democratic art; easily understandable to social

masses.

Marxism in Literature

The “accuracy” of the art object The reconstruction of the past referring to

the “facts” Raymond Williams: Marxism and Literature

Social realism