Class Struggle and Literature

Paper Summary:

In this article, the writer notes that class struggle is one conflict that has persistently influenced social development and art. For purposes of this paper, the writer treats both criticism and history as forms of 'art' in themselves, respectively based on the creative equality between art and criticism Oscar Wilde argues in 'The Critic as Artist' and the structural equipollency between history and literature cited by Hayden White in 'The Historical Text as Literary Artifact'. The writer maintains that if one therefore assumes that most art, as defined above, is the product of either education, or writing, or both, then it is one of the inherent components of class struggle. The writer concludes that art, especially in the written form, is a practice which, regardless of its intention, may empower those elites capable of comprehending and analyzing it and therefore potentially sharpens the class divide.

From the Paper:

"As such, both history and criticism employ the same technique to the same end: the use of reason and language to explain the meaning of an object at hand. Thus each stands in the same relationship to the object as the artist stands to reality. Since literature and painting undergo the same process of creation and interpretation as history, we may also interpret history as art also.
"While both authors appear to have similar notions about the use of 'art' to assign form and meaning, their positions on its role in society diverge."

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