Raymond Williams  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Revision as of 20:52, 19 April 2007; view current revision
←Older revision | Newer revision→
Jump to: navigation, search

Related e

Wikipedia
Wiktionary
Shop


Featured:

Raymond Henry Williams (31 August 1921 - 26 January 1988) was a Welsh academic, novelist and critic. His writings on politics, culture, the mass media and literature reflected his Marxist outlook. He was an influential figure within the New Left and in wider culture. Some 750,000 copies of his books have sold in UK editions alone (Politics and Letters, 1979) and there are many translations of his various work.[1] [Apr 2007]

Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society is a book written by the Welsh Marxist academic Raymond Williams, and published in 1976 by Croom Helm.

Originally intended to be published along with the author's 1958 work Culture and Society, this work examines the history of more than a hundred words that are familiar and yet confusing: Art; Bureaucracy; Culture; Educated; Management; Masses; Nature; Originality; Radical; Society; Welfare; Work; and many others.

The approach is cultural rather than etymological. Sometimes the origins of a word cast light on its meaning, but often one finds that it originally meant something quite different. Or that there has been a fierce political struggle over the 'correct' meaning.

A revised an expanded edition of Keywords was published by Fontana in 1983. In 2005 Blackwell published New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society, an attempt to update Williams' text. [Keywords:_A_Vocabulary_of_Culture_and_Society] [Apr 2007]

Personal tools