Raymond Williams and the limits of cultural materialism

Cultural materialism has become an influential discipline in recent \nyears, particularly so in 'Renaissance' studies, but also more generally in \n'English', as well as departments defined as practising 'cultural' or \n'communications' studies. The phrase is usually linked with the name of \nRaymond Williams, but a cursory examination of Williams's own work \nquickly establishes that it is a phrase he rarely uses, and only schematically \nattempts to define. The thesis therefore takes the form of an investigation into \nthe way cultural materialism has come to be understood, by examining in \ndetail the trajectory of Raymond Williams's theoretical development, and how \nhis own engagement with various theoretical positions has helped to set \n'limits' on the meaning of cultural materialism. \nChapters 1 and 2 deal with some of Williams's earliest work, \nparticularly Reading and Criticism, as a way of investigating how reasonable \nit is to tag him as a 'Left-Leavisite', arguing that Leavis's undoubted \ninfluence is resisted (though not entirely rejected) from a very early stage. The \nfirst chapter considers in detail Leavis's work at Cambridge, the influence of \nEliot, and the significance of the 'Organic Community'. Chapter 2, which is \nbased around a comparative analysis of Williams's and Leavis's readings of \nDickens, argues that Williams rejects the 'organic community' in favour of his \n'knowable community'. Chapters 4 and 5 deal with specific 'theoretical' \nissues: the first, based around a reading of Terry Eagleton's critique of \nWilliams's use of the Marxist metaphor of 'base and superstructure', shows \nsome of the problems which arise from Williams's cultural model, as well as \nsuggesting refinements; the second deals with the influence of Volosinov's \ntheories on Williams. Chapter 6 comes out of Williams's readings of the \n'Country-House' poems in The Country and the City, showing how his \npractice of literary criticism relies on an acceptance of 'ideology' apparently \ndenied in his more 'theoretical' writings. This analysis is extended as a result \nof investigations into the 'De L'Isle' manuscripts relating to the Penshurst \nestate. Chapter 7 argues that it is possible to see the work of Fredric Jameson \nas developing Williams's cultural materialism into Jameson's debates on \npostmodernism. \nIn the Introduction and Conclusion, I have taken the opportunity to \nlook briefly at the activity of cultural materialism as it has developed since \nRaymond Williams's death in 1988. The Introduction emphasizes what I see \nto be important methodological differences between 'cultural materialism' \nand 'new historicism'; the Conclusion deals with the continuing debate over \nthe value of a cultural materialist approach by considering the 'appropriation' \nof Shakespeare.