Tuesday, January 26, 2010
"Literature" & "Culture and Anarchy"
Between the two essays “Literature” by Raymond Williams and “Culture and Anarchy” by Matthew Arnold, I must admit I understood Williams much better than Arnold, probably due to Arnold’s referencing to religious texts and people and his extensive vocabulary. As Williams outlines the development of literature, I think he is trying to express that literature is more than just what is read. In doing so, he creates a strong relationship between literature and the social context in which it is found. His final points seem to define literature as “a specializing social and historical category,” as well as “decisive evidence of a particular form of the social development of language” (Williams 53). I think Arnold also tries to describe a similar relationship but with a religious context. Since much of our culture is influenced by religion, I think he tries to prove that literature is therefore influenced by religion… whether he feels that is a positive or negative thing, I am unsure.
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I also had a difficult time with both readings. In "Literature", a line that really bothered me is "None of its steps can be retraced, and the abstraction of the 'concrete' is a perfect and virtually unbreakable circle." (45). If the abstraction is a circle, isn't it possible to retrace ones steps since the circle is unbreakable and easy to follow? This seemed like a bad and contradictory statement.
ReplyDeleteMatthew Arnold seemed to go off on tangents, like when he rants about Eton and boarding schools. It was already hard to follow his writing because of all the older references without him going off on these tangents. I understand why he used boarding schools to illustrate his points about conformity and anarchy but the 'attacking Eton' comments weren't completely necessary.