The Moment of "Scrutiny"

The Moment of

Author: Francis Mulhern

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2020-05-05

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 1789606853

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Few thinkers have had more impact on English-speaking culture in the twentieth century than the late F.R. Leavis (1895-1978). Paradoxically, his literary-critical studies and the cultural ideas associated with them have become pervasive influences, whilst losing none of their power of provocation. Yet amidst the extremes of admiration and hostility that his name attracts-in academic circles and beyond, on Left and Right alike-little serious attention has been given to what was his most audacious and significant venture: the journal, Scrutiny, whose chief editor he was for twenty years, until its closure in 1953. The specific history of this fascinating cultural enterprise is now studied for the first time in The Moment of 'Scrutiny'. Beginning with an analysis of Scrutiny's emergence in the complex historical conditions of inter-war England, Francis Mulhern goes on to recount the work of the journal. Elucidating the logic of of the project that it served, he demonstrates its coherence of purpose, while at the same time tracing the successive mutations that its discourse underwent in the changing politico-cultural conjunctures of its lifetime. A final chapter situates Scrutiny comparatively in the context of early-twentieth-century European thought, considers its specific function in the cultural history of mid-century England and the enigmas of its last years and after-life, and moves finally to an assessment of its significance today.

Teaching the Media

Teaching the Media PDF

Author: Len Masterman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2003-09-02

Total Pages: 363

ISBN-13: 1134955049

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An invaluable guide both for specialists in media and communication studies and all teachers who wish to use newspapers and TV in their teaching.

Figures of Catastrophe

Figures of Catastrophe PDF

Author: Francis Mulhern

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2016-02-16

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 1784781932

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A bold new vision of the modern English novel The leading critic Francis Mulhern uncovers a hidden history in the fiction of the past century, identifying a central new genre: the condition of culture novel. Reading across and against the grain of received patterns of literary association, tracing a line from Hardy and Forster, through Woolf, Waugh and Bowen, to Barstow, Fowles, Rendell, Naipaul, Amis, Kureishi and Smith, he elucidates the recurring topics and narrative logics of the genre, showing how culture emerges as a special ground of social conflict, above all between classes. The narrative evaluations of culture’s ends—the aspirations and the destinies of those whose lives are the subject of these novels—grow steadily darker over time, and the writing itself grows more introverted. A concluding discussion elicits the characteristics of the English condition of culture novel, in an international setting, and closes in, finally, on the central conundrum of the genre: its uncanny reprise, in its own plane, of the historical arc of the modern labour movement in Britain, from its beginnings in the late nineteenth century through its post-war heyday to the seemingly inexorable decline of recent decades.

I A Richards & His Critics V10

I A Richards & His Critics V10 PDF

Author: John Constable

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-04-23

Total Pages: 454

ISBN-13: 1136352287

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This is Volume 10 of a collection of ten of the selected works of I.A. This volume presents a selection of contemporary criticism discussing those of Richards’ works published between 1919 and 1938.

Common Writing

Common Writing PDF

Author: Stefan Collini

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 0198758960

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In a series of penetrating and attractively readable essays, Stefan Collini explores aspects of the literary and intellectual culture of Britain from the early twentieth century to the present. Common Writing focuses chiefly on writers, critics, historians, and journalists who occupied wider public roles as cultural commentators or intellectuals, as well as on the periodicals and other genres through which they attempted to reach such audiences. Among the figures discussed are T.S. Eliot, Graham Greene, J.B. Priestley, C.S. Lewis, Kingsley Amis, Nikolaus Pevsner, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Christopher Hitchens, and Michael Ignatieff. The essays explore the variety of such figures' writings - something that can get overlooked or forgotten when they are treated exclusively in terms of their contribution to one established or professional category such as 'novelist' or 'historian' - while capturing their distinctive writing voices and those indirect or implicit ways in which they position or reveal themselves in relation to specific readerships, disputes, and traditions. These essays engage with recent biographies, collections of letters, and new editions of classic works, thereby making some of the fruits of recent scholarly research available to a wider audience. Collini has been acclaimed as one of the most brilliant essayists of our time, and this collection shows him at his subtle, perceptive, and trenchant best. Common Writing will appeal to (and delight) readers interested in literature, history, and contemporary cultural debate.

Introducing Cultural Studies

Introducing Cultural Studies PDF

Author: David Walton

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 2007-11-29

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 1446230368

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"An outstanding entry level text aimed at those with little or no cultural studies knowledge... Innovative, creative and clever." - Times Higher Education "The ideal textbook for FE and first year HE cultural studies students. Its quality and character allow the reader to ‘feel’ the enthusiasm of its author which in turn becomes infectious, instilling in the reader a genuine sense of ebullient perturbation." - Art/Design/Media, The Higher Education Authority An introduction to the practice of cultural studies, this book is ideal for undergraduate courses. Full of practical exercises that will get students thinking and writing about the issues they encounter, this book offers its readers the conceptual tools to practice cultural analysis for themselves. There are heuristics to help students prepare and write projects, and the book provides plenty of examples to help students develop their own ideas. Written in a creative, playful and witty style, this book: Links key concepts to the key theorists of cultural studies. Includes a wide range of references of popular cultural forms. Emphasizes the multidisciplinary nature of cultural studies. Includes pedagogical features, such as dialogues, graphs, images and recommended readings. The book′s skills-based approach enables students to develop their creative skills, and shows students how to improve their powers of analysis generally.

Culture/Metaculture

Culture/Metaculture PDF

Author: Francis Mulhern

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-01-04

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 1134852223

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Culture/Metaculture is a stimulating introduction to the meanings of 'culture' in contemporary Western society. This essential survey examines: * culture as an antidote to 'mass' modernity, in the work of Thomas Mann, Julien Benda, José Ortega y Gasset, Karl Mannheim and F. R. Leavis * changing views of the term in the work of Sigmund Freud, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, T. S. Eliot and Richard Hoggart * post-war theories of 'popular' culture and the rise of Cultural Studies, paying particular attention to the key figures of Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall * theories of 'metaculture', or the ways in which culture, however defined, speaks of itself. Francis Mulhern's interdisciplinary approach allows him to draw out the fascinating links between key political issues and the changing definitions of culture. The result is an unrivalled introduction to a concept at the heart of contemporary critical thought.

Movies on Home Ground

Movies on Home Ground PDF

Author: Ian Craven

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2020-07-13

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 1527556735

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Movies on Home Ground: Explorations in Amateur Cinema offers a critical response to the still under-explored mode of amateur cinema, as a particular sphere of British film practice. Concentrating upon a roughly fifty-year period (1930–1980), during which such filmmaking grew rapidly as a significant leisure activity in Britain, the volume shows how popular ‘cine’ assumed distinctive institutional and ideological forms, and some remarkable aesthetic emphases, grounded in consistent technical and critical apparatuses. Although an outline history of such filmmaking is certainly implicit, the priority of Movies On Home Ground is to offer a series of overlapping perspectives on amateur movie-making, with a view to locating such filmmaking as a component of the broader shape of British film culture. Emphasis is thus given to institutional contexts, technical determinants, and the social formations of practising filmmakers, as well as to concerns with the construction of amateur outlooks, understandings of amateur aesthetics, and the remarkable diversity of amateur genericity. The anthology thus supplies a text offering support to study courses dealing with the many varieties of non-professional participation best understood as truly ‘amateur’, rather than as ‘independent’ or ‘alternative’ filmmaking. By granting the amateur a place within the acknowledged range of significant interventions, the recognised canon of British filmmaking is widened in fascinating new directions.