D. L. LeMahieu - Böcker

This book analyses the relationship between commercial and elite culture in Britain in the early twentieth century. The development of popular national daily newspapers, the cinema, the radio, the gramophone, and other forms of mass entertainment threatened to upset traditional patterns of British culture. Writers, artists, musicians, critics, and their sympathizers responded in a variety of ways. Some engaged in detailed polemics against the mass media; others, such as those associated with the BBC, embraced new technology and sought to uplift tastes. These groups struggled against a culture that measured success by popularity rather than aesthetic merit. With the significant extension of the franchise in 1918 and 1928, Britain finally enjoyed full parliamentary democracy. What culture was appropriate for that democracy became an issue which pitted the forces of the market place against the influence of an articulate minority.

In this volume, scholars from a number of academic disciplines illuminate how a range of philosophers and other thoughtful individuals addressed the complex issues surrounding philosophy and life writing.The contributors interrogate the writings of Teresa of Avila, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Stuart Mill, Wilhelm Dilthey, Walter Benjamin, Albert Camus, Bryan Magee, Mikhail Bakhtin, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Judith Butler, who range in time from the sixteenth to the twenty-first centuries.As this volume demonstrates, the relationship between philosophy and life writing has become an issue of urgent interdisciplinary concern. This book was originally published as a special issue of Life Writing.