MONASH UNIVERSITY FACULTY HANDBOOKS

Arts Undergraduate Handbook 1996

Authorised by Academic Registrar, April 1996

CLS4240

Culture and society in English studies

Proposed to be offered next in 1997

Andrew Milner

Synopsis Literary studies in England is the heir to a long and distinctive tradition of theorising about the relationship between culture and society - Raymond Williams' famous `culture and society' tradition. This tradition, and the ways in which it has been challenged and reinterpreted by recent critical theory, will be examined for their various accounts of the idea of culture. Theorists under consideration will include Matthew Arnold, T S Eliot, FR Leavis, QD Leavis, Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams, E P Thompson, Stuart Hall, Elaine Showalter and Terry Eagleton. Particular attention will be paid to the part played by literary studies in the genesis of what is now commonly called `British cultural studies'.

Assessment Two seminar papers + Long 4000-word essay (6000 words if taken as a 12-point subject)

Preliminary reading

• Baldick C The social mission of English criticism 1848-1932 OUP, 1983
• Eagleton T Literary theory: An introduction Blackwell, 1983
• Milner A Cultural materialism MUP, 1993
• Turner G British cultural studies: An introduction Unwin Hyman, 1990

Prescribed texts

• Arnold M Culture and anarchy CUP, 1960
• Eagleton T Criticism and ideology Verso, 1976
• Eagleton T The ideology of the aesthetic Blackwell, 1990
• Eliot T S Notes towards the definition of culture Faber, 1962
• Hall S and others (eds) Culture, media, language Hutchinson, 1980
• Hoggart R The uses of literacy Penguin, 1958
• Leavis F R Education and the university Chatto and Windus, 1948
• Leavis Q D Fiction and the reading public Penguin, 1979
• Lovell T Consuming fiction Verso, 1987
• Showalter E A literature of their own: British women novelists from Bronte to Lessing Virago, 1978
• Sinfield A Literature, politics and culture in postwar Britain Blackwell, 1989
• Thompson E P William Morris: Romantic to revolutionary Merlin Press, 1976
• Williams R Culture and society 1780-1950 Hogarth, 1992
• Williams R The long revolution Hogarth, 1992
• Wolff J Feminine sentences: Essays on women and culture Polity, 1990