Apostles of equality? : notions of elitism in the cultural criticism of Matthew Arnold and T. S. Eliot

Abstract

Although Cultural Criticism holds an important position in contemporary literary theory, its history goes as back as the nineteenth century. This dissertation attempts to address several important characteristics within the tradition by focusing on two noteworthy theorists who, above all, endeavoured to define the term 'culture'. The Introduction opens by explaining the importance of Cultural Criticism to Literary theory, and Literature's contribution to the discipline. Chapter One analyses the impact of Matthew Arnold, the celebrated Victorian thinker, and Chapter Two deals with T. S. Eliot, another great poet-critic, who approximately eighty years after the publication of Arnold's Culture and Anarchy, published his Notes Towards a Definition of Culture. While examining the two thinkers' definition of the cultural, the dissertation pays particular attention to any notions of elitism implicit in their work. By comparing and contrasting the cultural criticism of Arnold and Eliot, the concluding chapter elucidates their pioneering role in the field as well as their contribution. The Conclusion also strives to address the decisive shift from an elitist vision of the cultural to a more egalitarian one. The dissertation is titled 'Apostles of Equality?' because it aims to question Arnold and Eliot's suggestion that culture and egalitarianism might be incompatible.