DOCSLIB.ORG

GALA) – the University of Greenwich Open Access Repository

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
GALA) – the University of Greenwich Open Access Repository Greenwich Academic Literature Archive (GALA) – the University of Greenwich open access repository http://gala.gre.ac.uk __________________________________________________________________________________________ Citation: Brown, G. M. (1983) G.K.Chesterton: an argument for his status as a serious creative writer in the mainstream of English Romanticism, with a discussion of his possible influence on the novelist and poet Charles Williams. MPhil thesis, Thames Polytechnic. __________________________________________________________________________________________ Please note that the full text version provided on GALA is the final published version awarded by the university. “I certify that this work has not been accepted in substance for any degree, and is not concurrently being submitted for any degree other than that of (name of research degree) being studied at the University of Greenwich. I also declare that this work is the result of my own investigations except where otherwise identified by references and that I have not plagiarised the work of others”. Brown, G. M. (1983) G.K.Chesterton: an argument for his status as a serious creative writer in the mainstream of English Romanticism, with a discussion of his possible influence on the novelist and poet Charles Williams. ##thesis _type## , ##institution## Available at: http://gala.gre.ac.uk/6509/ __________________________________________________________________________________________ Contact: [email protected] 2S- Chester ton: an argument for his status as a serious creative writer in the mainstream of English. Romanticism, with a discussion of his possible influence on the novelist and poet Charles Williams. Brown. Submitted to the Council for National Academic Awards for the degree of Master of Philosophy, under the sponsorship of the Thames Polytechnic. May 1983, Gr.K.Chester ton: an argument for his status as a serious creative writer in the mainstream of English Romanticism,with a discussion of his possible influence on the novelist and poet Charles Williams. by G.M. Brown. There are two concurrent arguments: firstly, that the Edwardians found in Chesterton the same kind of liberating imaginative experience that earlier readers found in the first Romantics (1790-18.50); secondly, that, contrary to recent opinion, he was an artist of some depth. The first chapter describes this case against Chesterton and the real problems to which a critic must address himself. Chapter 2 identifies his position among the different post-Romantic movements in Victorian society. Chapter 3 shows his special debt to William Morris's ideas; but also illustrates that the best of Chesterton's historical writing is fresh and not derivative. The next four chapters deal with Chesterton's original achievement; in which, paradoxically, he is also most recognisably Romantic in his imagination and in his sensibility. Chapter 4 describes how his strange imagination developed from childhood to adulthood and ultimately shaped his whole career. The darker side of this imagination, his awareness of supernatural evil, is the subject of Chapter 5» Chapter 6 shows the newspaper journalist bringing all kinds of strong and tender feelings to bear on public life, and compares him to Hazlitt and his contemporaries. Chapter 7 shows how this imagination and sensibility combined to produce perceptive literary criticism. Chapter 8 argues that the novels of Chrles Williams show widespread signs of Chesterton's influence, and that this illustrates his power to permeate a younger mind. Finally Chapter 9 sums up: Chesterton is like pre-Victorian Romantic writers in his passion, his idealism, and in the imagination which perceives a miraculous universe behind the physical world. He expresses this view with the sensitivity and subtlety of the artist. Finally a rationale of Chesterton's apparent frivolity, based on his own metaphysics, is proposed as necessary to a just evaluation of his work* 1. Contents. Chapter 1 The Critical Problem p.2 2 An Edwardian Romantic 10 3 'The Legend of an Epic Hour,' Chesterton's Historical and Political Writing 32 4 'Unearthly Daylight 1 : Chesterton's Imagination 47 5 The Haunted Imagination 65 6 'Openly and Indecently Humane': Che ste rton * s Sensibility. 77 7 'The Middleman in Poetry': Chesterton's criticism. 93 8 Chesterton and Charles Williams 107 9 The Problem Re-examined 124 Bibliography: note 132 Footnotes: 1 P-137 2 p.140 3 P.149 Appendix A: Chesterton/Coulton correspondence 155 4 p-158 5. P-163 6. p.165 Appendix B: 'Romantic' Journalism of the Early 19C. 172 Appendix C: Chesterton and the Great War. 173 7- P-176 Appendix D: 'Romantic 1 Critics of the 19C. 184 8. p.187 9. p.196. Chapter Une. The Critical Pro diem. "Even poor old Chesterton must think; he can't have actually left off thinking altogether; there must be some form of cerebral function going forward to fill the empty hours of his misdirected and wasted life..." * (Chesterton in 1928, voicing current estimates of himself.) from 1901 to 1936> Gilbert Jieith Chesterton was one of the most popular of English writers* He was also one of the most prolific of any period; and ironically, both these characteristics contributed to the fact that nearly all serious critics virtually ignored him for years before his death and have done so ever since* (l) The joking words quoted above are actually a shrewd assessment of the critics' attitudes to him* (2) He was too jolly, too simple, to be considered in the same class as, say, Shaw, Conrad or iorster: all near contemporaries. (3) So the legend went* Serious reviews of tv/entieth-century literature often omit him altogether. (4) Processor Bernard Bergonzi expressed a typical view when he described Chesterton and .be Hoc as tne statues of fallen gods who deserve a long respectful stare before their features are finally eroded* (5) Yet, curiously, though critics neglect him, his name haunts our consciousness in the 'eighties* Middle-aged media people mine for 'bon mots' to sparkle in their own articles; journalists like Katharine Whitehorn and Clive James, public persons like Cardinal Hurne and ex-police chief Sir Robert Mark are recent examples* Bernard Levin refers to his ideas as well as to his witticisms* The Queen quoted him in her 198! Christmas Day broadcast* The modern choral work, 'The White Horse* by David Bedford is based on verses from Chesterton's poem* Father Brown had a T.V. apotheosis in Kenneth More* There were a spattering of selections, biographies and critical studies in the 'seventies* (6) Yet among younger people, Chesterton is not even known as tne fat man who gave up his seat in the 'bus for three ladies; even the myth has faded. Perhaps this is as well; now we can judge him more accurately as a writer, but it does give tae problem urgency; ne is in danger of slipping off the xibrary map completely in the next decade. Where, then, does he belong in literature? The range of his worjc makes him difficult to place; he wrote over thirty full-length books, and probably over a thousand articles and short stories, most but not all of which are collected into volume form. These writings include novels, verse, biographies, religious history, Cnristian apologetics, detective stories, politics, travel, three plays, much literary criticism, broadcast talks and an autobiography. Nobody has made up their minds about him; and certainly during his lifetime the critics differed vigorously about him» (7) In his first decade - that is, between 1901 and 1911 - the consensus of opinion was tnat he was brilliant, for instance, in 1903 his Bobert browning won praise from Alfred Noyes in The Speaker which summed up what readers felt about Chesterton at his best:'There are moments when one feels, with a sort of dazed terror, that his obscurity, his restraint, his negations, and .uis refusal to define or limit his conception of that behind the veil are only sure and perfect ways of asserting and making us feel its presence. 1 (8) But the critics early became exasperated* They did not understand the novels - The Observer hazarded a guess that Sunday in The Man Who Was Thursday might be 'the British aabbath 1 . (9) More seriously,they found his reasoning arbitrary, his method forced, the paradoxes obtrusive* JF.W.ilias in The Bookman said: 'Vie are looking at a troupe of performing truths'. But the volume of notices testified to the impact of this new young writer. Clement Shorter in The Sphere in 1904 announced that Chesterton had 'hypnotised 1 both critics and public, but that he nimself had neither liked nor understood what he had read* A11 the biographical accounts describe Chesterton's I extraordinary bounce to fame between 1901-1903, and the remarkable general interest in him. The Bookman wittily and accurately transposed Chesterton*s own epigram on Dickens to 'a length cut from the flowing and mixed substance called Mr, Chesterton r . (October 1906) The same review calls him 'one of the profoundest of living mystics*, and his passion and sincerity were also acknowledged, widely. Evidently reading Chesterton was a vivid experience for everybody, whether they approved or not. 'His sins were scarlet but his books were read* applied to him as well as to hilaire felloe* They certainly sold in rapid editionso (10) As the years went by, however, the criticisms accumulated* The Evening Standard foreshadowed future jibes when it likened Chesterton f s readers to those who 'laugh at his brilliance, and assume the attitude of an indulgent crowd at a circus. 1 (ll) After the first World War, the number of notices dwindled, although he was not publishing appreciably less; but in spite of his continued popularity with the public he was no longer an important writer for the critics* He had also labelled himself 'itoman Catholic* by his much publicised conversion in 1922, and thereby limited his appeal.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Angus Mackay Diaries Volume XVIII (2002 - 2004)
    Angus Mackay Diaries Volume XVIII (2002 - 2004) ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 177 Friday February 1 2002 - May 10 2002. Friday February 1 2002 Saturday February 2 2002 To Chiswick this a.m. to shop for K and give him a choice. Got back at twelve, but no sign. Arrived at something after one, animated newsy talk, and an omelette with the blewits and chanterellesI got at the lovely greengrocers - £29.50 a kilo. About two four inch blews and four or five chant. about £3, not bad for such deliciousness. Now it’s Saturday night, and K’s gone, after two wonderful days.I have done nothing except stand up and sit down, and prepare four meals, and I’m exhausted. I fear K might have felt I was lazy or feeble. Well, he started out – ‘Can’t stop here talking, or the light will go’, on the buddleia, ‘which job do you want done first?’ He sawed it right down, and I do see that it’s partly destabilised some bricks. A great relief. I hope that silly fussy man won’t find something else to shout to me about. I was becoming quite reluctant to go into the garden. Horrible to cut anything down, but on balance welcomed it. Comically, the wind was the strongest I’ve heard since I’ve been here. Quite expected a letter of complaint from the next door just as we were cutting down the dangerous bush. They have a ‘patio’ (sic) garden and are clearly nervous of a jungle takeover, or indeed anything they can’t control.
    [Show full text]
  • Reflections on Ageing: the Role of Relationships in Later Life
    Reflections on ageing The role of relationships in later life Edited by Chris Sherwood and Jessica Faulkner Foreword Ruth Sutherland, Relate Chief Executive About Relate’s campaign on relationships in later life n the autumn of 2013, Relate, the UK’s leading relationship support In 2013, Relate launched a campaign to raise organisation, celebrated its 75th anniversary. As the charity grows older and awareness of the importance of relationships Iwe reflect on 75 years of experience, the anniversary led us to thinking about in later life. This has included: our own ageing society, and how relationships fare as we grow older. This prompted us to launch a campaign to raise awareness of the importance of • polling 1,000 over 50s to find out about relationships in later life. Our aims were to encourage debate in society, within concerns and priorities as we get older the voluntary sector and in government, so that we would all become more • a partnership with Gransnet, including aware of the issues we face as we grow older, and the role that relationships can web chats with Relate counsellors play in that process. • publishing Who will love me when I’m 64? Our society is rapidly ageing. By 2025, half of the UK adult population will be – Relate and NPC’s report into the role of over 50. This represents a seismic shift in the demographics of our society and relationships in later life. will impact on every sphere of our lives. As we mentioned in our report Who will love me when I’m 64?, this doesn’t necessarily have to be the doom-laden This collection of essays marks the next phase future so often painted by the media.
    [Show full text]
  • The Quixotic Return of Heroism in GK Chesterton's Modernism
    Columbia University Department of English & Comparative Literature Tilting After the Trenches: The Quixotic Return of Heroism in G.K. Chesterton’s Modernism Luke J. Foster | April 6, 2015 Prof. Erik Gray, Advisor The Senior Essay, presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts with honors in English. Dedicated to Grace Catherine Greiner, a hope unlooked-for and a light undimmed. Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses.” Foster 2 Heroic and Ironic Chivalry Today almost forgotten, G.K. Chesterton’s “Lepanto” achieved immense popularity during World War I as a heroic vindication of the British cause. Chesterton published “Lepanto” three years before the outbreak of war in the weekly he edited, The Eye-Witness. A 173-line poem in ballad form, “Lepanto” deals with the decisive naval battle of 1571 when a coalition fleet drawn from the Habsburg Empire and several Italian city-states defeated a superior Ottoman naval force in the Ionian Sea. But from the decisively stressed opening syllables (“White founts falling”1), “Lepanto” looks beyond the historical significance of the battle and seeks to establish a myth with much broader implications. Chesterton, as his biographer Ian Ker explains, claimed that the story of Lepanto demonstrated that “all wars were religious wars,” and he intended the poem as a comment on the meaning of warfare in general.2 After the outbreak of World War I, “Lepanto” was read as an encouragement to British troops in the field.
    [Show full text]
  • Downloaded License
    Journal of early modern history (2021) 1-36 brill.com/jemh Lepanto in the Americas: Global Storytelling and Mediterranean History Stefan Hanß | ORCID: 0000-0002-7597-6599 The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK [email protected] Abstract This paper reveals the voices, logics, and consequences of sixteenth-century American storytelling about the Battle of Lepanto; an approach that decenters our perspective on the history of that battle. Central and South American storytelling about Lepanto, I argue, should prompt a reconsideration of historians’ Mediterranean-centered sto- rytelling about Lepanto—the event—by studying the social dynamics of its event- making in light of early modern global connections. Studying the circulation of news, the symbolic power of festivities, indigenous responses to Lepanto, and the autobi- ographical storytelling of global protagonists participating at that battle, this paper reveals how storytelling about Lepanto burgeoned in the Spanish overseas territories. Keywords Battle of Lepanto – connected histories – production of history – global history – Mediterranean – Ottoman Empire – Spanish Empire – storytelling Connecting Lepanto On October 7, 1571, an allied Spanish, Papal, and Venetian fleet—supported by several smaller Catholic principalities and military entrepreneurs—achieved a major victory over the Ottoman navy in the Ionian Sea. Between four hundred and five hundred galleys and up to 140,000 people were involved in one of the largest naval battles in history, fighting each other on the west coast of Greece.1 1 Alessandro Barbero, Lepanto: la battaglia dei tre imperi, 3rd ed. (Rome, 2010), 623-634; Hugh Bicheno, Crescent and Cross: the Battle of Lepanto 1571 (London, 2003), 300-318; Peter Pierson, © Stefan Hanss, 2021 | doi:10.1163/15700658-bja10039 This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0Downloaded license.
    [Show full text]
  • 9CHAPTER Making the Modern World
    CHAPTER9 Making the Modern World The Renaissance and Reformation, 1400 to 1648 lready in the fifteenth century, some intellectuals had begun to claim that centuries of backwardness had given way to a “modern” age. All people, of Acourse, believe they live in modern times, and they do. For historians, this transition to a “modern” time period, or even “early modern,” reflects the changing elements of society, state, and culture compared with those of the Middle Ages and before. The key to this transition was a new appreciation for classical antiquity, the culture of ancient Greece and Rome. Historians have named that perception the Renaissance, meaning a rebirth of attitudes drawn from Græco-Roman culture. Classical antiquity had, of course, been appreciated to one degree or another since its collapse in the West a thousand years before. Beginning around 1400, however, a renewed interest in ancient history intertwined with economic, political, and reli- gious developments. Reflecting on the past while sailing into the unknown, the Europeans traveled out of the later Middle Ages (ca. 1300–1500) and landed in the early modern period of history (ca. 1400–1815) (see timeline C). THE PURSE OF PRINCES As the Europeans recovered from the onslaught of the Black Death, the resurging economics of the towns propelled them into undreamed-of wealth and success. Amid plague and peasant rebellion, a dynamic idea later called capitalism began to catch on. Capitalism was a new form of economic practice that went beyond the markets of farmers or fairs. The “capital” of capitalism refers to a substantial amount of wealth that is available, and necessary, for investment.
    [Show full text]
  • Gilbert Keith Chesterton - Poems
    Classic Poetry Series Gilbert Keith Chesterton - poems - Publication Date: 2012 Publisher: Poemhunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive Gilbert Keith Chesterton(29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) Gilbert Keith Chesterton was an English writer. He published works on philosophy, ontology, poetry, plays, journalism, public lectures and debates, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics, and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction. Chesterton has been called the "prince of paradox". Time magazine, in a review of a biography of Chesterton, observed of his writing style: "Whenever possible Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories—first carefully turning them inside out." For example, Chesterton wrote "Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it." Chesterton is well known for his reasoned apologetics and even some of those who disagree with him have recognized the universal appeal of such works as Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man. Chesterton, as a political thinker, cast aspersions on both progressivism and conservatism, saying, "The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected." Chesterton routinely referred to himself as an "orthodox" Christian, and came to identify such a position more and more with Catholicism, eventually converting to Roman Catholicism
    [Show full text]
  • THE MYTH of LEPANTO and ITS LITERARY REPRESENTATIONS in EUROPEAN EPIC POETRY of the LATE CINQUECENTO-EARLY SEICENTO Maria Shakhray Università Di Bologna
    THE MYTH OF LEPANTO AND ITS LITERARY REPRESENTATIONS IN EUROPEAN EPIC POETRY OF THE LATE CINQUECENTO-EARLY SEICENTO Maria Shakhray Università di Bologna RIASSUNTO: Stimolata da fondamentali eventi storici come la guerra d’Oriente e in particolare il suo momento culminante – il leggendario trionfo di Lepanto –, la tradizione epica europea del secondo Cinquecento e primo Seicento subisce profonde trasformazioni. L’adozione stessa dei fatti storici recenti come argomento epico significava una deviazione radicale dal percorso tradizionale in quanto faceva abbandonare agli autori dell’epica eroica “moderna” i modelli classici per avventurarsi in audaci esperimenti poetici. Questo articolo intende analizzare alcuni degli aspetti più importanti privilegiati dagli autori dei tre testi selezionati, appartenenti alla tradizione epica italiana, francese e spagnola: La Christiana vittoria maritima di Francesco Bolognetti, L’Austriade di Pierre de Deimier e La Austríada di Juan Rufo. Il presente saggio è un tentativo di stabilire affinità e differenze semantiche e formali nel discorso poetico della nuova realtà storica, politica, militare e ideologica, esaminando più da vicino la natura dei nuovi fermenti responsabili dell’innovazione profonda di topoi epici tradizionali – il processo che secondo Mikhail Bachtin, costituisce la condizione essenziale per l’evoluzione e per il rinnovamento continuo di ogni genere letterario. PAROLE CHIAVE: Lepanto, storia, mito, crociata, Francesco Bolognetti, Juan Rufo, Pierre de Deimier ABSTRACT: Stimulated by fundamental
    [Show full text]
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations.TXT
    The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations PREFACE Preface =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- This is a completely new dictionary, containing about 5,000 quotations. What is a "quotation"? It is a saying or piece of writing that strikes people as so true or memorable that they quote it (or allude to it) in speech or writing. Often they will quote it directly, introducing it with a phrase like "As ---- says" but equally often they will assume that the reader or listener already knows the quotation, and they will simply allude to it without mentioning its source (as in the headline "A ros‚ is a ros‚ is a ros‚," referring obliquely to a line by Gertrude Stein). This dictionary has been compiled from extensive evidence of the quotations that are actually used in this way. The dictionary includes the commonest quotations which were found in a collection of more than 200,000 citations assembled by combing books, magazines, and newspapers. For example, our collections contained more than thirty examples each for Edward Heath's "unacceptable face of capitalism" and Marshal McLuhan's "The medium is the message," so both these quotations had to be included. As a result, this book is not--like many quotations dictionaries--a subjective anthology of the editor's favourite quotations, but an objective selection of the quotations which are most widely known and used. Popularity and familiarity are the main criteria for inclusion, although no reader is likely to be familiar with all the quotations in this dictionary. The book can be used for reference or for browsing: to trace the source of a particular quotation or to find an appropriate saying for a special need.
    [Show full text]
  • The Death of Humane Medicine and the Rise of Coercive Healthism
    THE DEATH OF HUMANE MEDICINE THE DEATH OF HUMANE MEDICINE AND THE RISE OF COERCIVE HEALTHISM Petr Skrabanek THE SOCIAL AFFAIRS UNIT © The Social Affairs Unit 1994 All Rights Reserved British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A cataloguing record of this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 907631 59 2 Reprinted 1995 (twice), 1998 TO PAUL SACHET The views expressed in this book are the author's own, not those of the Social Affairs Unit, its Trustees, Advisers or Director Book production by Crowley Esmonde Ltd Typeset by Rowland Phototypesetting Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk Printed and bound in Great Britain by St Edmundsbury Press Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk Contents The Author 7 Preface 9 Robin Fox Foreword 11 Acknowledgements 13 Part One: Healthism 1 The rise of healthism 15 2 After Illich 17 3 Before Illich 23 4 Health for sale 29 5 'Anticipatory' medicine 31 6 Unhealthy obsession with health 37 7 'Positive health' and its promotion 41 8 Green healthism 51 9 Thanatophobia and the medicalisation of death 53 Part Two: Lifestylism 1 Recipes for longevity 57 2 Fitness craze 71 3 Foodism 78 4 The wages of sin 99 5 The demon drink 111 6 Damned tobacco 119 5 DEATH OF HUMANE MEDICINE Part Three: Coercive Medicine 1 From theory to practice 137 2 Coercive altruism 139 3 The doctor as agent of the state 146 4 Totalitarian medicine 152 5 Pregnancy police 157 6 Lifestyle surveillance 161 7 The Stakhanovite worker 167 8 Genetic tyranny 171 9 The war on drugs 176 10 Autonomy 184 Notes and References 195 6 The Author Petr Skrabanek died on 21st June 1994 from an aggressive prostatic cancer at the age of fifty three.
    [Show full text]
  • Poems by G.K. Chesterton -.:: GEOCITIES.Ws
    www.freeclassicebooks.com Poems By G.K. Chesterton www.freeclassicebooks.com 1 www.freeclassicebooks.com Contents I..................................................................................................................4 THREE DEDICATIONS ................................................................................4 TO EDMUND CLERIHEW BENTLEY - THE DEDICATION OF THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY.........................................................................................4 TO HILAIRE BELLOC - THE DEDICATION OF THE NAPOLEON OF NOTTING HILL ...........................................................................................................6 TO M. E. W. ................................................................................................7 II - WAR POEMS .........................................................................................8 LEPANTO....................................................................................................8 THE MARCH OF THE BLACK MOUNTAIN 1913.........................................11 BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS ........................................................12 THE WIFE OF FLANDERS.........................................................................13 THE CRUSADER RETURNS FROM CAPTIVITY ..........................................14 III - LOVE POEMS.....................................................................................15 GLENCOE.................................................................................................15 LOVE'S TRAPPIST
    [Show full text]
  • "Old Friends, Like Old Wines, ONLY GET MORE Flavor." -- Yiddish Proverb
    "Even if you are Catholic, if you live in New York you're Jewish. If you live in Butte, Montana, you are going to be goyish even if you are Jewish." -- Lenny Bruce "G~d could not be everywhere and therefore he made mothers." -- Yiddish Proverb "Old friends, like old wines, ONLY GET MORE flavor." -- Yiddish Proverb "Don't look for more honor than your learning merits." -- Yiddish Proverb "First mend yourself, and then mend others." -- Yiddish Proverb "A hero is someone who can keep his mouth shut when he is right." -- Yiddish Proverb "Do not be wise in words - be wise in deeds." -- Yiddish Proverb "One old friend is better than two new ones." -- Yiddish Proverb "What you don't see with your eyes, don't invent with your mouth." -- Yiddish proverb "The wise man, even when he holds his tongue, says more than the fool when he speaks." -- Yiddish Proverb "You can't control the wind, but you can adjust your sails." -- Yiddish proverb 1 "As you teach, you learn." -- Yiddish Proverb "Behind every successful Jew stands a bigot who could not stop him." -- Sam Levenson "A half-truth is a whole lie." -- Yiddish Proverb "You can't shake hands with a clenched fist." -- Sam Levenson "Our faith is grounded in our Jewish tradition. We believe we're from the House of David. We believe we're from the House of Abraham, so we cannot hate our own." -- James Caviezel "I thought of such Christian inventions as the ghetto and the Jewish badge of shame. The Nazis didn't have to go very far to pick up their know-how." -- Lionel Blue "There are more important things in life than money.
    [Show full text]
  • Paid Domestic Work’ Be Reconciled with Feminism?
    The problem that has a name: can ‘paid domestic work’ be reconciled with feminism? Lotika Singha PhD University of York Women’s Studies February 2017 Abstract Paid domestic work endures – with its oldest roots grounded in slavery and servitude, and newer ones in contemporary exploitative capitalism. Feminists the world over have analysed its occupational relations in depth to show how they reproduce race, class and gender inequalities, with many domestic workers experiencing inhumane treatment. But feminists also use domestic help. Should such feminists and paid domestic work be condemned, or can it be reconciled with the overarching feminist goals of equality and liberation that encompass all dimensions of discrimination? My thesis approaches this question through an interrogation of outsourced domestic cleaning in the UK and India. The primary data include 91 semi-structured interviews with White and Indian women working as cleaning service-providers and White and Indian female academics with an interest in feminism/gender and who were outsourcing domestic cleaning (or had outsourced previously), in the UK and India, respectively. My analytical approach, rooted in my particular varifocal diasporic gaze, draws on Mary Douglas’s anthropology-based cultural theory, which she used to show how comparative analysis enhances sociological understandings of the workings of the West’s own institutions and culture. My cross-cultural analysis thus takes into account similarities and differences between and within the four groups of participating women, as well as silences in the data. My findings reveal that in the modern urban context, outsourced domestic cleaning can be done as work (i.e. using mental and manual skills and effort and performed under decent, democratic work conditions) or as labour (requiring mainly manual labour, accompanied by exertion of ‘natural’ emotional/affective labour and performed in undemocratic conditions).
    [Show full text]