Raymond Williams and Structures of Feeling

Niall Gildea, Louise Braddock

• Publisher: University of Wales Press
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9781837723966
• eBook ISBN:
  9781837723980
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Raymond Williams is one of the most important anglophone cultural critics of the twentieth century. In a distinguished career, his readings of the British literary canon offered radical new ways of looking at British society as it developed from the Romantic period into the modern age. Central to this re-evaluation was the idea of 'structures of feeling', which Williams shaped in order to explain the ways in which members of societies felt about one another, and how they changed over time. The authors of the present volume examine the idea of structures of feeling, and its value for ongoing contemporary debates about relationships of human feeling in areas such as anthropology, economics, law, literary studies, philosophy, psychology and social geography.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• Part I: Structures of Feeling in Context
• Part II: Structures of Feeling in Practice
• Part III: Structures of Feeling and Cultural Expression
• Afterword: Are Structures of Feeling an Illusion?
• Notes