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Synopsis
Raymond Williams' prolific output is increasingly recognized as the most influential body of work on literary and cultural studies in the past fifty years. This book provides the most comprehensive study to date of the theoretical and historical context of Williams' thinking on literature, politics and culture.
John Higgins traces Williams' intellectual trajectory from its beginnings in the literary criticism of the 1950s, across the development of a New Left cultural politics, to its culmination in the theory and practice of cultural materialism. Higgins vigorously challenges many of the received ideas concerning Williams' work. In so doing he offers a significant challenge and correction to many of the current representations of Williams' thought, and a powerful argument for renewed engagement with it.
Booknews
Reappraises the two dozen or more volumes of academic work produced by the Welsh scholar Williams (b. 1921), who spent his last decades at Cambridge University teaching English and drama. Argues that his engagement with English studies cannot be understood in terms purely internal to the discipline of English, and that he wrote in opposition not only to the official culture of liberal and conservative literary studies, but also the orthodoxies of Marxist thinking on literature, culture, and politics. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknew.com)