Raymond Williams

"Si dijéramos que los libros se han constituido como objetos-fetiche en la sociedad moderna, estaríamos, probablemente, exagerando. Desde luego que este tipo de comportamiento puede exhibirse en el enfoque sobre la lectura que ha recibido el titulo de "El placer en los libros". Ese enfoque a menudo se muestra como ejemplo de mera indulgencia y lo que es mas importante, oculta un resentimiento de la critica como una actividad 'molesta dedicada a la busqueda de errores', diseñada para quitarle el placer a uno. La consecuencia de esto es que el estudio de la literatura debera estar siempre limitado a un agradecido reconocimiento". Raymond Williams

Los textos que se publican en este volumen son, más que un conjunto sistemático de soluciones teóricas a los problemas de la cultura y la historia, un discurso crítico sobre las estructuras cotidianas en las que vivimos, mediante preguntas necesarias y que se encuentran a la altura de nuestro presente. Desde los análisis sobre el modo de objetivación de la vida propia hasta la lectura atenta de novelas entendidas como formalizaciones de una experiencia colectiva, Williams considera el trabajo intelectual como un pensar desde un lugar concreto y con el que es necesario redefinir los conceptos culturales y terminar con las oposiciones individuo/sociedad, subjetividad/objetividad para comprender la cultura como el modo en que se relacionan posiciones de sujeto, procesos sociales globales y distribuciones específicas de poder mediante esquemas dinámicos y no deterministas.

Harry Price has worked for years as a railway signalman in the Welsh border village of Glynmawr. Now he has had a stroke, and his son, Matthew, a lecturer at Oxford, returns to the close-knit community that he left.As Harry lies in silent pain in his cramped bedroom, Matthew experiences the jarring familiarity of the childhood world which, alienated, he can no longer re-enter. Struggling with the unspoken tensions and losses that returning home has provoked, he recalls what has made him who he is. Upstairs his deeply thoughtful father recalls his own arrival in the village, the relationships between men during the General Strike, and the social and personal changes that followed, and he struggles to articulate all that has been left unsaid.A beautiful and moving portrait of the love between a father and son, and of the strength and resilience of a small community, Border Country is Raymond Williams finest novel.

A worker is killed in the striking coalfields of south Wales. Some months later a government minister suspected of being connected with the death is shot. Lewis Redfern, once a radical, now a political analyst and journalist, pursues the killer, a lonely hunt that leads him through a maze of government leaks and international politics to a secret organization: a source of insurrection far more powerful than anyone could have suspected. A compelling thriller, The Volunteers is also an engrossing reminder of the conflict between moral choice and political loyalty for through his obsessive pursuit of justice, Redfern finally encounters the truth about himself.

Con este libro, el famoso historiador y novelista galés abrió el camino para reconocer la importancia de la prensa popular, el inglés y el público lector en la formación de la cultura inglesa y en la cultura occidental en su conjunto. Los argumentos que puso en circulacion este libro cambiaron la forma en que muchos criticos e intelectuales analizaban y definian la cultura. Esta obra tambien ha sido de considerable importancia en el desarrollo de los estudios culturales como disciplina independiente e impulso una corriente teorica fundamental para imaginar mundos nuevos y alternativos desde las practicas culturales y sociales existentes en los margenes de la fabrica o el supermercado.

A diferencia del "marxismo de la objetividad", que atribuye el cambio social a una serie de fuerzas ajenas a la voluntad consciente de los hombres, puede decirse que el autor es un "marxista de la subjetividad". Williams ha intentado en su obra introducir en el pensamiento marxista la centralidad de la conciencia. Desde esa perspectiva, este clasico de la critica estetica revisa variados topicos de la teoria cultural como la literatura, el teatro, las formas de produccion cultural y los rasgos de la sociedad del capitalismo tardio y del orden socialista. El tema central de este volumen ya esta dado en el titulo, y es la elaboracion, dentro de la teoria marxista y de la politica socialista, de un "materialismo cultural".

Raymond Williams was one of the worlds leading cultural critics. With this book, Williams brilliantly documents the exciting birth of the popular press, and explores the growth of the reading public in English-speaking culture in Western Society. The Long Revolution of the title is the third revolution of culture after the democratic revolution and the industrial revolution. Almost uniquely, Williams work bridged the divides between aesthetic and socio-economic inquiry, between Marxist thought and mainstream liberal thought, and between the modern and post-modern world.Continuing the theme he began so successfully in Culture and Society, Williams examines the gradual change, which took over our political, economic, and cultural life. He placed special emphasis on the creative mind in relation to social and cultural thinking. After discussing the theory of culture he turns to a fascinating historical study of such institutions as education and the press, traces the development of a common language, and reveals the links between ideas, literary forms, and social history.

Harry Price has worked for years as a railway signalman in the Welsh border village of Glynmawr. Now he has had a stroke, and his son, Matthew, a lecturer at Oxford, returns to the close-knit community that he left. As Harry lies in silent pain in his cramped bedroom, Matthew experiences the jarring familiarity of the childhood world which, alienated, he can no longer re-enter. Struggling with the unspoken tensions and losses that returning home has provoked, he recalls what has made him who he is. Upstairs his deeply thoughtful father recalls his own arrival in the village, the relationships between men during the General Strike, and the social and personal changes that followed, and he struggles to articulate all that has been left unsaid. A beautiful and moving portrait of the love between a father and son, and of the strength and resilience of a small community, Border Countryis Raymond Williams' finest novel

Who Speaks for Wales? is the first collection of Raymond Williams' writings on Welsh culture, literature, history and politics. It brings together material that has long been overlooked by commentators on his work, and emphasises both the centrality of his Welshness to his work as a whole, and the continuing relevance of his thought for post-devolution Wales. Daniel Williams's introduction offers an original reading of Raymond Williams's career from a Welsh perspective and underlines the ways in which his engagement with Welsh issues makes a significant contribution to contemporary debates on nation, race and class. Who Speaks for Wales? will be essential reading for everyone interested in questions of identity, nationhood and ethnicity in Britain and beyond.

A comprehensive introduction to the work of one of the outstanding intellectuals of the twentieth century. Raymond Williams is a towering presence in cultural studies, most importantly as the founder of the approach that has come to be known as "cultural materialism." Yet Williams' method was always open-ended and fluid, and this volume collects together his most significant work from over a twenty-year period in which he wrestled with the concepts of materialism and culture and their interrelationship. Aside from his more directly theoretical texts, however, case-studies of theatrical naturalism, the Bloomsbury group, advertising, science fiction, and the Welsh novel are also included as illustrations of the method at work. Finally, Williams' identity as an active socialist, rather than simply an academic, is captured by two unambiguously political pieces on the past, present and future of Marxism

Raymond Williams has made a central contribution to the culture of the Left in the English-speaking world. Politics and Letters is a volume of interviews with Williams, conducted by members of the New Left Review editorial committee, that is designed to bring into clear focus the major theoretical and political issues posed by his work. Introduced by novelist Geoff Dyer, Politics and Letters ranges across his biographical development, the evolution of his cultural theory and literary criticism, his work on dramatic forms and his fiction, and an exploration of British and international politics.

As a brilliant survey of English literature in terms of changing attitudes towards country and city, Williams' highly-acclaimed study reveals the shifting images and associations between these two traditional poles of life throughout the major developmental periods of English culture.

Considered to be the founding father of British cultural theory, Williams was concerned throughout his life to apply a materialist and socialist analysis to all forms of culture, defined generously and inclusively as structures of feeling. In this major work, Williams applies himself to the problem of modernism. Rejecting stereotypes and simplifications, he is especially preoccupied with the ambivalent relationship between revolutionary socialist politics and the artistic avant-garde. Judiciously assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the modernist project, Williams shifts the framework of discussion from merely formal analysis of artistic techniques to one which grounds these cultural expressions in particular social formations. Animating the whole book is the question which Williams poses and brings us significantly closer to answering: namely, what does it mean to develop a cultural analysis that goes beyond the modern and yet avoids the trap of postmodernism s new conformism ?"

elevision: Technology and Cultural Form was first published in 1974, long before the dawn of multi-channel TV, or the reality and celebrity shows that now pack the schedules. Yet Williams' analysis of television's history, its institutions, programmes and practices, and its future prospects, remains remarkably prescient. Williams stresses the importance of technology in shaping the cultural form of television, while always resisting the determinism of McLuhan's dictum that 'the medium is the message'. If the medium really is the message, Williams asks, what is left for us to do or say? Williams argues that, on the contrary, we as viewers have the power to disturb, disrupt and to distract the otherwise cold logic of history and technology - not just because television is part of the fabric of our daily lives, but because new technologies continue to offer opportunities, momentarily outside the sway of transnational corporations or the grasp of media moguls, for new forms of self and political expressio

Power and politics corrupt...this is the future. A worker is killed in the striking coalfields of south Wales. Some months later a government minister suspected of being connected with the death is shot. Lewis Redfern, once a radical, now a political analyst and journalist, pursues the killer, a lonely hunt that leads him through a maze of government leaks and international politics to a secret organization: a source of insurrection far more powerful than anyone could have suspected - the world of the Volunteers. A compelling thriller, 'The Volunteers' is also an engrossing reminder of the conflict between moral choice and political loyalty for through his obsessive pursuit of justice, Redfern finally encounters the truth about himself.

Raymond Williams' reputation rests mainly on his contribution to literary and cultural studies, but he was also an important critic and theoretician in the field of drama. "Drama in Performance", first published in 1954, pioneered a method of dramaturgical rather than literary-critical analysis of plays, locating dramatic texts in the conditions and conventions of their original performance and reading them to disclose their performance potentialities. This method, which anticipated such contemporary developments as performance analysis and the semiotics of drama, is here applied to representative texts from key periods of the history of drama: the Greek stage, the medieval theatre-in-the-round and pageant-wagon, the Elizabethan public playhouse, London commercial theatres from the Restoration to the late 19th century, the naturalist stage of the Moscow Art Theatre, 20th century experimental drama, and contemporary film. This edition presents the text as Williams revised it in 1966.In addition it provides an updated bibliography of work in this field, a complete listing of all Williams' relevant writings, and a new Introduction (by Graham Holderness) which locates the book both within modern dramatic theory and criticism and within Williams' own work and demonstrates its continuing challenge and relevance.

Narrativa

Introducción, por Raymond Williams (Universidad de Cambridge); Lenguaje, por Ferruccio Rossi-Landi (Universidad de Trieste) y Massimo Pesaresi; Comunicación no verbal, por Arthur D. Schulman (Universidad de Washington, St. Louis) y Robyn Penman (Uni