Literary Politics

The Politics of Literature and the Literature of Politics

D. Philips, K. Shaw, D. Philips, K. Shaw

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137270146
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Literatur Allgemein

Literary Politics identifies and debates competing definitions of 'English Studies' as an academic subject, celebrates the diversity of contemporary literary studies, and demonstrates the ways in which a range of literary texts can be understood as politically engaged, sometimes in unexpected ways.

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Introduction: The Politics of Literature and the Literature of Politics

Deborah Philips

Literature students tend not to perceive English Literature as a particularly political subject to study, nor are most English departments seen as centres of political debate. Francis Mulhern, in his 1979 study of F.R. Leavis’s journal Scrutiny, has suggested that: ‘Literary criticism as it is mainly practiced in England is in reality the focal activity of a discourse whose foremost general cultural function is the repression of politics’ (Mulhern, 1981, p. 331). Nonetheless, as both Mulhern and Leavis knew full well, English as a subject area has long been used politically. Even in its naming and placing in an academic institution, a literature department has political implications: English Literature, Literature, English, English Language, English Studies or Humanities? Every variation represents a battle over definitions of and distinctions between ‘Literature’ and other academic subjects. The literary curriculum has always been subject to intervention in school and university departments, while politicians regularly invoke the English literary tradition for their own political agendas, and literary references are frequently employed in the promotion of political values.

To edit a collection on literature and politics is thus fraught with difficulties. Politics and Literature could potentially point to a range of arenas: literature that directly addresses political subjects, to literary works that have a direct political purpose, to the politics of the curriculum. The combination of the two terms raises a number of questions; as Stuart Hall, notoriously and succinctly, said of popular culture: ‘I have almost as many problems with “popular” as I have with “culture”. When you put the two terms together, the difficulties can be pretty horrendous’ (Hall, 2011, p. 72). Both ‘Politics’ and ‘Literature’ are similarly contested terms which defy simple definitions and inevitably beg the questions: whose politics, and whose literature?

Writing over forty years ago, John Lucas suggested: ‘Politics and Literature. The subject is a daunting one, the relationship between the two is so problematic, elusive, uncertain. Yet it is these difficulties which make the subject fascinating and deserving of attention’ (Lucas, 1971, p. 1). It was daunting for Lucas, and he was writing at a time, as the contents of his collection makes clear, when the politics of literary criticism appeared to be more straightforward than they are currently; there are no women contributors in Lucas’s collection, and all the contributors are from British universities. This was not uncommon in collections of literary criticism in those long-ago days before feminist literary theory and post-colonial criticism had become necessary fields in the undergraduate literature curriculum. Niall Lucy, writing in 1997, dates the beginning of a political agenda in literary studies to that moment in the 1970s:

Suddenly, or so it seemed, university literature departments were having to engage with ‘political’ and ‘philosophical’ questions about what a literature department teaches . . . Such questions aroused great hostility at first, but in time most literature departments responded to them by conceding just a little bit of ground. ‘Critical’ approaches were renamed ‘ theoretical’ approaches and most departments added a few courses on ‘women and literature’, ‘postcolonial writing’, ‘literature and society’ – that sort of thing. (Lucy, 1997, p. vi)

While Lucy is right that a politicisation of literary studies was institutionalised in the undergraduate programme in the 1970s, largely as a response to student and staff interventions, university literature departments have a long history of political engagement. In an article on the ‘Discipline of Letters’ an eminent literary critic called for ‘A new deal for English’:

What English studies need is not more scholarship but fresh contacts, cross-fertilization . . . of the complex of cultural subjects of which the study of literature forms part and the intellectual disciplines of which it can profitably draw upon to enrich its method. . . . But can anyone be so optimistic as to believe that any university reform less violent than a bloody revolution would make such a programme possible. (Leavis, 1968, p. 9)

The year was 1943, and the critic was Q. D. Leavis; English Studies continues to wait for her bloody revolution, although there have been skirmishes, in which the ‘cross fertilization’ of cultural subjects has tested the limits of English as a discipline. Cultural Studies, feminism and post-colonial theory have been among those intellectual disciplines that have challenged concepts of the literary text, of literary tradition and of authorship, and all have come to enrich the subject of Literature.

Raymond Williams, perhaps the figure most associated with a politics of English Studies, is, unsurprisingly, invoked in several of the essays in this collection. In 1983 he gave a talk to Oxford English Limited on ‘The Future of “English Literature” in which he pointed out that the Literature syllabus had never been a stable phenomenon, but was constantly subject to shifts – to inclusions and exclusions:

The map of English Literature which people carry around in their heads, which in a sense underlies the orthodox syllabus, its division into periods, its tag-names of certain kinds of writing in certain periods – that map is a construction. Moreover, it is a construction which has been laid down by discoverable generations of scholars and critics, often not so much reconstructed in each generation as layered – new layers being put onto the older types of construction. It is what I often call, in practice, a ‘selective tradition’ in which there is selecting and reselecting all the time. (Williams, 1983, p. 150)

This ‘selective tradition’ has however often been misrepresented as a static ‘great tradition’, in which there should be no changes to the treasure house of Literature. ‘Literature’ has long been employed in the promotion of conservative values. In T. S. Eliot’s 1935 essay ‘Religion and Literature’ he argued that literary criticism was incomplete without a religious and ethical dimension. The belief that there are moral and spiritual certainties to be found in literature is also on the agenda for contemporary Conservative thinking. Red Toryism is one philosophical frame for David Cameron’s current Conservative leadership, and a driving influence of the Big Society. Red Toryism has been promoted as a new idea by the Conservatives’ favourite philosopher, Phillip Blond (who is a theologian), but it is one that goes back to a Canadian tradition that claims its own literary heritage in the works of G. K. Chesterton and Stephen Leacock. The Canadian Red Tory, Ron Dart, also invokes a British literary tradition in support of conservative values:

the English High Romantics (Coleridge, Wordsworth, Southey) were deeply conservative, and their Red Tory conservatism led them to not only oppose the way economics was dominating the political scene, but equally, the way industrial England was destroying the environment for the purpose of gaining short term profit. . . . In short, much of the Tory tradition has a deep and abiding respect for the land. (Dart, 1999, p. 35)

This version of literary history neatly leaves out Shelley (who could by no standards be termed a conservative), and Wordsworth’s writings on the French Revolution. The Romantic poets are here frozen into a moment of Romantic Nationalism and are levered into an endorsement of a new Conservatism.

The Right wing series of pamphlets, the Black Papers, published between 1969 and 1977 and collected in a book in 1971, was another conservative call for a more traditional education and an assault on dangerous liberalism in the curriculum. The Black Papers were edited by C. B. Cox and A. E. Dyson, both English Literature academics and both influenced by F. R. Leavis. The ethos of the Black Papers continues, the published collection remains in print, and the subject of literature is still (along with Media Studies) regularly invoked by conservative politicians as a means of bashing ‘political correctness’. In 1991, John Clare (the education correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, rather than the poet) wrote a newspaper article in which he harangued contemporary English teachers for neglecting ‘great literature’, and characterised them as:

United by a belief that great literature and correct grammar and spelling are instruments of class domination, they debated tactics for subverting the national curriculum, breaking the stranglehold of A-levels and ‘empowering the kids’ . . . Their first target was great literature. Those such as Matthew Arnold and F. R. Leavis who had helped define what was great were dismissed as ‘class-restrictive, heterosexist and ethnocentric’. (Clare, 1991, p. 181)

Two decades later, in April of 2011, the coalition government’s Minister for Education, Michael Gove, wrote about the teaching of literature in schools for the Daily Telegraph, which was widely reported with headlines declaring: ‘ Literature is dying out in schools’ (as in, for example, the Evening Standard and the Daily Mail). Gove called in his article for a return to ‘a culture of reading’, but what he meant was a return to a more traditional, ‘classic’, literary curriculum:

the English Literature GCSE only actually requires students to study four or five texts, including one novel. In exams more than 90 per cent of the answers on novels are on the same three works: Of Mice and Men, Lord of the Flies and To Kill a Mockingbird. Indeed, out of more than 300,000 students who took one exam board’s paper last year, just 1,700 studied a novel from before the 20th century: 1,236 read Pride and Prejudice, 285 Far from the Madding Crowd and only 187 coped with Wuthering Heights. . . . It’s my mission to change what we expect of young people, and reverse the fashionable assumption of far too many in education that children shouldn’t be challenged to achieve far more. . . . I want the next generation to grow up with a real sense of style – the elegant prose style of those who have made the English language the greatest source of beauty in our world (Gove, Daily Telegraph, 2011)

This argument is close to Matthew Arnold’s 1867 position that culture: ‘ is or ought to be, the study, the pursuit of perfection, and that of perfection as pursued by culture, beauty and intelligence’ (Arnold, 1993, p. 81). But it is also disingenuous, and it belies the sophistication and complexity of literary studies in the twenty-first century. It is, moreover, a falsification of the English Literature that is currently taught in schools. Michael Gove, as Minister of Education, must know that the specifications for GCSE syllabi require students to cover a range of six substantial texts, which must include a range of genres and periods. In 2012 the AQA (Assessment and Qualifications Alliance), the awarding body for English schools examinations, explained their requirements on their website:

AQA GCSE Specifications

This specification offers opportunities for the detailed study of a substantial and diverse range of texts, including drama, poetry, and prose published before and after 1914. The majority of the works studied must be literary texts originally written in English, but works in translation may also be included. The works studied must be of sufficient substance and quality to merit serious consideration. The specification requires an understanding of literary tradition and an appreciation of social and historical influences and cultural contexts, both of which are tested compulsorily in coursework. (www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/english, accessed April 2012)

Gove has also spoken out on the importance of rote learning and of ‘facts’ for children in education: ‘Only when facts and concepts are committed securely to the working memory . . . do we really have a secure hold on knowledge’ (Gove quoted in The Guardian, 14 November, 2012, www.guardian.co.uk/politics). These are phrases that have chilling echoes of the teacher Gradgrind in Hard Times; despite Gove’s expectation that schools should be placing emphasis on the ‘classics’ of English Literature and celebrating ‘the elegant prose style of those who have made the English language the greatest source of beauty in our world’ (which would presumably include Charles Dickens), this is an association that seems to have evaded him.

Toby Miller has identified two forms of the Humanities in the American context, which he terms ‘Humanities One’ and ‘Humanities Two’. Humanities One incorporates ‘literature, history, and philosophy’, is the more ‘venerable and powerful’, and, according to Miller, ‘owes its lineage to Arnold and Leavis’ (Miller, 2012, p. 40). Humanities Two is less prestigious, comprising the subject areas of media and communication studies, but it is the field that attracts more students: ‘Humanities One dominates rhetorically. Humanities Two dominates numerically’ (Miller, 2012, p. 2). Miller points out that Leavis’s own doctorate would now, ironically, be characterised as ‘media studies’, dealing as it did with the relationship between journalism and literature. He argues that the split between Humanities One and Two is a class division, in which privileged students and researchers are able to immerse themselves in the ‘culture’ of Humanities One (‘banal Arnoldian training’) while Humanities Two subjects are understood as occupational, and less high-status (‘supine vocational training’), (Miller, 2012, p. 105). This division, in which Arnold’s advocated study of ‘the pursuit of perfection’ is restricted to an élite, is fast coming to England. Gove did press for the introduction of an English Baccalaureate (Ebacc) to replace GCSEs, an examination that would largely have excluded arts subjects for school students (English Literature remains a core subject). The proposal was angrily attacked by figures across the arts that Gove eventually had to back down. Among the critics was the Turner prize winner for 2012, Elizabeth Price, who argued, as Miller did for America, that government education policy is élitist and divisive.

What’s depressing about the Ebacc is not only that it will be difficult for individuals to fulfil their ambitions, or get to identify their capabilities and shape their lives around them. But also what you end up with is art becoming something that is available only to privileged people and expressive only of that experience. That’s also what’s so damaging about the withdrawal for state funding for humanities and arts at universities: these will become the subjects of the privileged, and history-writing and novel-writing and art-making and poetry-writing will become homogenous. (Price quoted in Higgins, 2012)

The Ebacc may have been withdrawn, but Gove has nonetheless determined to put his mark on the English Literature curriculum, which now requires students ‘to study a greater range of high-quality, challenging texts from key periods in the history of English Literature’ (The Guardian, June 11, 2013, www.guardian.co.uk/education). The implication is that the texts that students have studied to date are neither high-quality nor challenging, and the emphasis placed on Shakespeare, the 19th Century novel and Romantic poetry (at the expense of contemporary literature) is one that would gladden the heart of F.R. Leavis.

Raymond Williams expressed his bemusement in 1989 that the subject of literature should be subject to such political battles and that it should provoke such controversy:

Still, often, I find myself surprised that English studies are so controversial. I mean that the interests which bring people to the subject are so unusually strong and substantial, involving poems, novels and plays, enjoying discussing them, thinking about them and even making them; and in a way an English course seems, as the continual strength of applications demonstrates, so ideal a continuation of those interests that begin for us so early and seem quite central to our understanding of life . . . And how can it be that a subject like that should have been, almost throughout, a source of chronic irritation and indeed a series of acrid public disputes and causes celebres (Williams, 1989, p. 147).

This collection of essays emerged from a conference, titled ‘Literature and Politics’ held at the University of Brighton in association with the English Subject Centre, which (perhaps disappointingly) did not provide either a series of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1 Introduction: The Politics of Literature and the Literature of Politics
• 2 Literature and Politics
• 3 Shakespeare v. The BNP
• 4 Roaring Boys and Weeping Men: Radical Masculinity in Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi
• 5 Having the Last Word: World War I Fictions as Counter-Narratives
• 6 ‘Show an Affirming Flame’: Writers and Readers in Modern Dark Times
• 7 Literature, Politics and History
• 8 The Politics of Nostalgia in the Rural English Novel
• 9 (Re)Writing the 1984–1985 UK Miners’ Strike
• 10 Can the Environment be Saved? Post-Apocalyptic Children’s Novels of the 1980s
• 11 Access All Areas? Literature and Education
• 12 The Politics of Enhancement: The Last Days of the English Subject Centre
• Bibliography
• Index