Pagey
Bluelight Crew
- Joined
- Apr 11, 2012
- Messages
- 9,460
This is gonna be a bit boring and literary, sorry, but I need thoughts if anyone's interested! This is for my end of degree dissertation for my BA in English Lit. The intro is only about 1000 words - basically, do you really get what my dissertation's gonna be about (the dissertation is 10,000 words in total), do I make my secondary criticism and plan clear, etc:
Literary criticism surrounding Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984 has not been sparse in the past few decades regarding both authors’ distaste of the political systems of their times and their predictions of political dystopia in years to come. Indeed up to this very year, critics, journalists, bloggers and even simply avid readers continue to draw links between not only the two novels, but their relationship to today’s world as well. It is indeed fairly obvious upon first reading that ‘both men foresaw the future as totalitarian rather than democratic and free’, a prediction which has, in certain minds, come to life recently through such ‘revelations [as] Edward Snowden’’s, revelations betraying a system of ‘state surveillance that would make Orwell gasp’.
Is the condemnation of totalitarianism really, however, the intrinsic nature of both novels? Contrasting with such a school of thought are such renown critics as William Empson, who famously argued, regarding Orwell’s work, that ‘the worst thing about the way communism had developed, was that it had nearly got back to being as bad as Christianity’. Similarly the scientific progress surrounding the time of Huxley’s work on Brave New World points towards a globalised anxiety focused more on the possible future effects of the dramatic advances science and technology were making in the 1920s and 30s. Haldane, a friend of Huxley’s, thus predicts as early as 1923 a scenario where:
ectogenesis is now universal, and in this country less than 30 per cent of children are now born of woman. The effect on human psychology and social life of the separation of sexual love and reproduction which was begun in the 19th century and completed in the 20th is by no means wholly satisfactory.
The debate surrounding Huxley and Orwell’s novels thus remains, in both schools of thought – either focused on their political natures or those expanding away from it - centred namely around how science and totalitarianism will one day come to a harmonious understanding and destroy the world as we know it. This theory, however, omits one of the major themes in both novels, a theme perhaps touched upon by Empson but which, in fact, runs through these novels’ lines in a manner much more insidious and pervasive: that of religion. And just as Brave New World’s dictator-like figure Mustapha Mond reads an old book claiming that ‘yes, we inevitably turn to God; for this religious sentiment is of its nature so pure, so delightful to the soul that experiences it, that it makes up to us for all our other losses’ (p.187), so must this ‘pure’ feeling of religious belief and religious assimilation be examined in detail in Huxley and Orwell’s works. How does religion challenge these novels’ focus on politics and totalitarianism? Why is it so important, bearing in mind the times and contexts of both these works’ productions, to give religion a place on the centre-stage? Can the analysis of religion in 1984 and Brave New World lead to more clues regarding the nature of totalitarianism?
I will explore all of these questions, and more, in this dissertation by analysing in detail the historical context amidst which Huxley and Orwell were writing, considering of course the rise of various forms of totalitarianism but attempting to go beyond such a limited view to examine as well the influence of psychological and psychiatric discoveries, of a new form of global travel and travel writing, and of past historical events on the authors’ writing – all of which are, moreover, largely linked to the co-existing religious themes of Brave New World and 1984.
This dissertation is divided into a number of sections, all of which will look at the relationship between religion and a specific aspect of not only the authors’ contemporary history, but of their novels as well. Thus I will begin by exploring the relationship between religion and disenchantment, a disenchantment which came partly as the result of the backdrop of World Wars One and Two, respectively, and a disenchantment which contributes greatly to the booming of other methods of understanding the world. The necessity of understanding the world came as a priority in the 1920s especially through such doctors as Watson, and his theory of Behaviourism, and Freud, and the main theme of this dissertation’s second part is therefore the relationship between religion and science in our novels. I will then specify the discussion about science so as to examine the technological advances of the early 20th century and how these impacted both religious and political thought, relying on such discoveries, theories and essays as were produced by the likes of Haldane and J.D. Bernal, with an emphasis on a need for practicality which can be seen as the backbone of Brave New World and 1984 – totalitarianism indeed being very keen on justifying its practices and ideologies through their practicality and supposed opportunities for advancement. As Bernal puts it at the start of his essay ‘The World, the Flesh and the Devil’, ‘the modern reformer, as unrealistic but less imaginative [as various religions], demands his chosen future in this world of men’: the present is all about creating a space conductive to future practicalities and to a domination of man over the forces which appear to control him. Bearing this idea in mind, I will finally analyse the relationship between religion and totalitarianism in Huxley and Orwell’s minds, drawing on Empson’s analysis whilst attempting to go a lot further in my demonstrations. To conclude this piece of work I will consider the link between author and God and make an argument for a paradoxical relationship between writing and religion. To put it briefly: how and why do Brave New World and 1984 reflect the evolving religious surroundings in the United Kingdom in the years both preceding and following World War Two?
Any advice ( please don't tear me apart - it's hard word) would be wonderful! Cheers guys!
Literary criticism surrounding Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984 has not been sparse in the past few decades regarding both authors’ distaste of the political systems of their times and their predictions of political dystopia in years to come. Indeed up to this very year, critics, journalists, bloggers and even simply avid readers continue to draw links between not only the two novels, but their relationship to today’s world as well. It is indeed fairly obvious upon first reading that ‘both men foresaw the future as totalitarian rather than democratic and free’, a prediction which has, in certain minds, come to life recently through such ‘revelations [as] Edward Snowden’’s, revelations betraying a system of ‘state surveillance that would make Orwell gasp’.
Is the condemnation of totalitarianism really, however, the intrinsic nature of both novels? Contrasting with such a school of thought are such renown critics as William Empson, who famously argued, regarding Orwell’s work, that ‘the worst thing about the way communism had developed, was that it had nearly got back to being as bad as Christianity’. Similarly the scientific progress surrounding the time of Huxley’s work on Brave New World points towards a globalised anxiety focused more on the possible future effects of the dramatic advances science and technology were making in the 1920s and 30s. Haldane, a friend of Huxley’s, thus predicts as early as 1923 a scenario where:
ectogenesis is now universal, and in this country less than 30 per cent of children are now born of woman. The effect on human psychology and social life of the separation of sexual love and reproduction which was begun in the 19th century and completed in the 20th is by no means wholly satisfactory.
The debate surrounding Huxley and Orwell’s novels thus remains, in both schools of thought – either focused on their political natures or those expanding away from it - centred namely around how science and totalitarianism will one day come to a harmonious understanding and destroy the world as we know it. This theory, however, omits one of the major themes in both novels, a theme perhaps touched upon by Empson but which, in fact, runs through these novels’ lines in a manner much more insidious and pervasive: that of religion. And just as Brave New World’s dictator-like figure Mustapha Mond reads an old book claiming that ‘yes, we inevitably turn to God; for this religious sentiment is of its nature so pure, so delightful to the soul that experiences it, that it makes up to us for all our other losses’ (p.187), so must this ‘pure’ feeling of religious belief and religious assimilation be examined in detail in Huxley and Orwell’s works. How does religion challenge these novels’ focus on politics and totalitarianism? Why is it so important, bearing in mind the times and contexts of both these works’ productions, to give religion a place on the centre-stage? Can the analysis of religion in 1984 and Brave New World lead to more clues regarding the nature of totalitarianism?
I will explore all of these questions, and more, in this dissertation by analysing in detail the historical context amidst which Huxley and Orwell were writing, considering of course the rise of various forms of totalitarianism but attempting to go beyond such a limited view to examine as well the influence of psychological and psychiatric discoveries, of a new form of global travel and travel writing, and of past historical events on the authors’ writing – all of which are, moreover, largely linked to the co-existing religious themes of Brave New World and 1984.
This dissertation is divided into a number of sections, all of which will look at the relationship between religion and a specific aspect of not only the authors’ contemporary history, but of their novels as well. Thus I will begin by exploring the relationship between religion and disenchantment, a disenchantment which came partly as the result of the backdrop of World Wars One and Two, respectively, and a disenchantment which contributes greatly to the booming of other methods of understanding the world. The necessity of understanding the world came as a priority in the 1920s especially through such doctors as Watson, and his theory of Behaviourism, and Freud, and the main theme of this dissertation’s second part is therefore the relationship between religion and science in our novels. I will then specify the discussion about science so as to examine the technological advances of the early 20th century and how these impacted both religious and political thought, relying on such discoveries, theories and essays as were produced by the likes of Haldane and J.D. Bernal, with an emphasis on a need for practicality which can be seen as the backbone of Brave New World and 1984 – totalitarianism indeed being very keen on justifying its practices and ideologies through their practicality and supposed opportunities for advancement. As Bernal puts it at the start of his essay ‘The World, the Flesh and the Devil’, ‘the modern reformer, as unrealistic but less imaginative [as various religions], demands his chosen future in this world of men’: the present is all about creating a space conductive to future practicalities and to a domination of man over the forces which appear to control him. Bearing this idea in mind, I will finally analyse the relationship between religion and totalitarianism in Huxley and Orwell’s minds, drawing on Empson’s analysis whilst attempting to go a lot further in my demonstrations. To conclude this piece of work I will consider the link between author and God and make an argument for a paradoxical relationship between writing and religion. To put it briefly: how and why do Brave New World and 1984 reflect the evolving religious surroundings in the United Kingdom in the years both preceding and following World War Two?
Any advice ( please don't tear me apart - it's hard word) would be wonderful! Cheers guys!
