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Understanding Richard Hoggart
A Pedagogy of Hope

"This is an engaging, informative and combative work. It is exactly what it says, a ‘critical introduction’ that moves way beyond plain description of Hoggart’s life and works, showing the relevance (but also, sometimes, the limitations) of his work and constantly contextualizing it within debates in both Cultural Studies and the wider political field. It is extremely well rooted in the various relevant literatures but also adds much knowledge from new sources, particularly those contained in the Hoggart Archive. In every sense, it is a good advert for, and defence of, studying the Humanities."
- Dave Russell, Leeds Metropolitan University 

“A fascinating and insightful analysis of a leading public intellectual, obsessive auto-biographer, founder of a new academic discipline and original cultural critic.” - James Curran, Goldsmiths, University of London

“The authors of Understanding Richard Hoggart highlight, with rigor and respect, the continuing relevance of Hoggart's work to anyone with an interest in how the cultural landscape at once shapes, and is shaped by, our individual habits." - Lynsey Hanley, journalist and author of 'Estates: an Intimate History'

Michael Bailey (Author), Ben Clarke (Author), John K. Walton (Author)

9781405194945, Wiley

Paperback / softback, published 16 December 2011

232 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1 cm, 0.299 kg

Awarded 2013 PROSE Honorable Mention in Media & Cultural Studies

With the resurgent interest in his work today, this is a timely reevaluation of this foundational figure in Cultural Studies, a critical but friendly review of both Hoggart's work and reputation.

  • Re-examines the reputation of one of the ‘inventors’ of Cultural Studies
  • Uses new archival sources to critically evaluate Hoggart's contribution and influence, set his work in context, and determine its current relevance
  • Addresses detractors and their positions of Hoggart, delineating long-term ideological battles within academia
  • Brings cultural studies, literary criticism, and social history to bear on this figure whose interests spread across disciplines, to create a text which blends many threads into a coherent whole

Foreword viii

Acknowledgements x

Introduction 1

1 Literature, Language, and Politics 16

The Uses of Literature 18

Hoggart in Context: Post-war Britain and the Leavises 21

The Language of ‘Theory’ 30

The Common Reader 34

Democratic Criticism 38

2 The Politics of Autobiography 49

Cultural Studies and Autobiography 51

Generic Conventions 54

Representing Working-Class Lives 59

Situating the Critic 66

3 Working-Class Intellectuals and Democratic Scholarship 73

Scholarship Boy 74

University Adult Education and the Varieties of Learning 76

The Grammar School and Working-Class Education 79

'Working-Class Intellectuals' and the 'Great Tradition' 85

4 Cultural Studies and the Uses of History 94

History and Cultural Studies 94

Locating Richard Hoggart 96

Richard Hoggart and the Emergence of Social History 102

Historians and Richard Hoggart 119

'Nostalgia', 'Romanticism', and 'Sentimentality': Recuperating Hoggart 122

5 Media, Culture, and Society 134

The BBC and Society 135

The Emergence of Commercial Broadcasting and Pilkington 138

Diversity, Authority, and Quality 145

The Limits and Possibilities of Broadcasting in the Twenty-First Century 154

6 Policy, Pedagogy, and Intellectuals 181

An International Servant 183

The Idea of University Adult Education 189

The Role of the Intellectual 194

Index 209

Subject Areas: Literature: history & criticism [DS]
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