Literary Studies and Cultural Studies

Literary studies and cultural studies are not opposites; they are both disciplines whose objective is the analysis of cultural forms. Richard Hoggart’s evident sympathy with Leavis is no aberration since Leavis shared significant critical and even political ideals with the disciplinary migrants. Non-literary values – ethical, social, political – have always informed English and are not incompatible with aesthetics. Innovation and experimentation, particularly in literature, produce inaccessible and structurally complex works which fulfil modernist literary criteria. Cultural studies declare its superiority over English by claiming to analyse all values, not merely the outmoded aesthetic. Contemporary theorists of cultural studies are generally more sanguine than their forebears about diversity and disciplinary fragmentation, both of which fit well with a postmodernist philosophy. The new interdisciplinarity means that English can compete with cultural studies, but also renders it vulnerable to charges of methodological incoherence and simple ignorance.