The literary imagination and the explanation of socio-cultural change in modern Britain

Abstract

Much of the substance of the contemporary debate on the nature and consequences of ‘mass culture’ in Britain is to be found in the work of four English literary critics: T. S. Eliot, F. R. Leavis, Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams (1). Their work is in the Utopian tradition of social and aesthetic critical thought that has been termed “the English Dream: the ideal of the collective, unalienated folk society, where honest men work together and create together” (2); the ideal of the organic community, in short. Such a society is seen as composed of homogeneous, self-sufficient, stable and tradition-dominated communities, comprising a population which shares a common language and culture, and which is typified—but not exclusively bound—by a mentality attached to the tangible, local and known (3).