A Critical Investigation Of Raymond Williams' Structures Of Feeling

Structures of feeling is the only original term forged by Raymond Williams, and is his important thinking tool on the relationship between culture and society as well. Because Williams is arguing against the direct determination to the super-construction of the economic infrastructure, therefore the proposition of structures of feeling is the important amendment to the Marxism. The term is under the influence of many similar terms, such as social character,world-view,hegemony. Williams differentiate the term with these terms so as to determine the connotation and sphere to use, when being used, the term has been gradually clarified and amended. Therefore, it is a historical research needed to understand the term exactly.Although the structures of feeling is the main tools used by Williams to discuss the relationship between culture and society, in specific usage, he dedicated the term in the literary research. Williams prefer this term especially when discussing the dramatic ideas and conventions, and he took it as the social cause to the changes of dramatic ideas and conventions, in order to substitute with the orthodox Marxism. What's more, Williams took it into use when talking about industrial novels of the nineteenth century. The reasons why Williams had been devoted to the research of literature are not only that literature is closely connected with the language but also that he is a professor of dramatics.Although Williams had taken the term structures of feeling into use in many literary researches, he rarely put it into cultural research, it had became very difficult to understand with his populism and the oppositional attitudes of the term. The birth of the term is for the research of movies, while it finally became the research means for dramas which are the typical culture type of Bourgeois, which is not only resulted from Williams'preference, but also the contradiction of itself:the term should never be put into operation contemporarily, for if it does, then it will be converted into a agitating idea of commitment, which will make the special meaning of the term totally vanish, that is to say, it's subordinated to ideology once and for all.