Raymond Williams
Raymond Williams (1921-1988) was a prominent Welsh cultural critic and theorist known for his significant contributions to cultural studies. Growing up in a working-class family near the Welsh border, Williams was deeply influenced by his cultural heritage and his father's involvement in the labor movement. He excelled academically, receiving a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he became involved in leftist politics, including a brief identification with communism. His wartime service interrupted his education, but upon returning, he began to shape his views on culture through a critical lens, opposing elitist perspectives in literary criticism.
Williams is best known for his works such as "Culture and Society" and "The Country and the City," where he challenged traditional notions of culture and emphasized its connection to democracy and socialism. He advocated for the understanding of culture as a comprehensive way of life rather than a distinction between high and low forms. Additionally, his interest in the cultural implications of television highlighted his commitment to exploring contemporary forms of expression. Through his academic career at institutions like Stanford University and Cambridge, Williams left a lasting legacy in the field of cultural studies, influencing discussions on culture, politics, and society.
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Subject Terms
Raymond Williams
Literary Critic
- Born: August 31, 1921
- Birthplace: Llweyn Derw, Pandy Abergavenny, Gwent, Wales
- Died: January 28, 1988
- Place of death: London, England
Biography
Raymond Henry Williams, born on August 31, 1921, was the only child of Henry Joseph Williams, a railroad signalman, and Gwendolene (Bird) Williams. Two early influences stand out as significant factors for his future career. His home, near the tiny Welsh border villages of Pandy and Crucorney, caused him to grow up between two cultures. His awareness of a Welshness from which he was in certain ways cut off is reflected in his autobiographical novel of 1960, Border Country. Also registering strongly with him was the fact that his father was a working man as well as a staunch supporter of the labor movement.
At age eleven Williams received one of the scholarships reserved for exceptional working-class children to attend King Henry VIIIGrammar School for Boys in Abergavenny. From this school he proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was awarded a full-tuition scholarship in 1939. He came to recognize this educational track as an Anglicizing one. Amidst the strong left-wing atmosphere of the 1930’s, Williams joined the campus socialist club and for a while regarded himself as a communist. World War II military service in an anti-tank regiment interrupted his education, but he found time in June of 1942 to marry Joy Dalling, a student at the London School of Economics. The names of their three children, Merryn, Ederyn, and Gwydion Madawc, suggest one way in which Williams reaffirmed his Welsh roots.
Returning to Cambridge after the war, Williams earned his degree in 1946 and took a position as a tutor in the Workers’ Educational Association. Much interested in the literary and cultural criticism of major figures such as F. R. Leavis, I. A. Richards, and T. S. Eliot, Williams nevertheless strongly objected to what he recognized as their elitist tendencies. Eliot’s Notes Toward the Definition of Culture (1949) in particular set him on the path to cultural studies. In his 1958 book, Culture and Society, 1780-1950, he strives to refute the notion that culture is not compatible with values such as democracy, socialism, and popular education, to which he was devoted. In 1960 he became a charter member of the New Left Review. Williams also emphasized his cultural convictions in such works as Modern Tragedy (1966), in which he contends that tragedy arises from common experience and thus can and does flourish in modern literature.
Later, Williams gravitated to the academic life. In 1973-1974 he taught at Stanford University, in the former year publishing another important work in his specialty, The Country and the City. Appointed professor of drama at Cambridge in 1974, he taught there until his retirement in 1983.
Dismayed by disjunctions such as that between “high” and “low” culture, Williams insisted that culture is “the whole way of life,” although in the view of some critics, his continuing close ties to the workers’ movement limited his vision. Not surprisingly, he also wrote on television as a cultural form. Williams died on January 16, 1988, leaving an important body of pioneering work in the area of cultural studies.