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LESSON 7
Cultural Poetics/Cultural Materialism

Subject : LIT201 Submit by : GROUP 6

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DEFINITION
Cultural Poetics
is a form of literary analysis whose purpose is to discover the original
ideology behind significant historical and biological facts about writers,
resources, and the art they create.

Cultural Poetics began to come forward as a direct result of the move of

New Criticism (another dominating influence in literary criticism that
used literary works as an object with an existence of its own.
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Cultural Poetics is a practice of literary interpretation that has two branches. The main
branches are Cultural Materialism and New Historicism.

Cultural Materialism New Historicism.

The American branch of cultural poetics is often
called New Historicism. Its founding father,
Stephen Greenblatt, along with a host of other
scholars
holds that one’s culture permeates both texts and
critics. Just as all of society is intricately
interwoven, so are critics and texts, both with each
other and with the culture in which the critics live,
and the texts are produced.
Cultural materialism, the British branch of cultural poetics,
is openly Marxist in its theories and overtly political and
cultural in its aims.
It finds its ideological roots in the writings of Marxist critics
Louis Althusser and Raymond Williams. Believing that
literature can serve as an agent of change in today’s world,
cultural materialists declare that any culture’s hegemony is
basically unstable.
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Cultural Materialism
Cultural materialism as a literary-critical practice—is a Marxist-inspired and mostly British
approach to, in particular, Shakespeare and early modern English literature that emerged and
became prominent in the 1980s.
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History and Overview

•Cultural materialism as a literary-critical practice—is a Marxist-inspired and mostly British
approach to, in particular, Shakespeare and early modern English literature that emerged and
became prominent in the 1980s.

•Rejecting humanist beliefs in transcendent, ahistorical, truth and in essential human nature,
cultural materialists insisted on historicization and argued that Shakespeare—and the study of
literature in general—had been hijacked by a conservative humanist ideology that presented
itself as timeless and “natural” and perhaps unwittingly colluded with a profoundly unjust and
rapacious social order.
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RAYMOND WILLIAMS
Raymond Williams, a pivotal figure in Cultural Materialism,
challenged traditional views of culture.

He coined the term "cultural materialism" and argued that

culture is intricately linked to historical context, rejecting the
notion of culture as timeless and natural.

Williams' work laid the groundwork for understanding how

culture both reflects and challenges societal norms.
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Michel Foucault
While not a direct advocate of Cultural Materialism, Michel
Foucault's ideas on power, knowledge, and truth have
influenced this approach.

Cultural Materialists draw from Foucault to analyze how

ideologies, including those found in literature, are entwined
with and influenced by power structures.
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Louis Althusser
Louis Althusser's Marxist theories have also left a mark on
Cultural Materialism.

His concept of the ideological state apparatus and the role of

ideology in maintaining social order aligns with Cultural
Materialism's focus on dissecting ideological forces in literature
and culture.
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Influence and Objectives

These scholars, alongside others of their time, shaped the foundation of Cultural Materialism.

The approach underscores the critical importance of examining culture and literature in their
specific historical and material contexts.

Cultural Materialism aims to unveil how culture contributes to the creation and challenge of
social norms and power structures, particularly in matters related to gender, race, and class.
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Conclusion
Cultural Materialism offers valuable insights into the complex interplay between culture,
literature, and society.

By highlighting key scholars and their contributions, we gain a deeper understanding of how
this approach has evolved and continues to provide critical interventions in contemporary
political and cultural debates.
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•One of cultural materialism`s main interests was social stratification and the way in which the
dominant social order sought (and seeks) to legitimize itself—for instance, through the
construction of socially marginalized groups as “other,” a practice that led to an early interest in
issues of gender and race, and would substantially contribute to the rise of queer studies.

•Inspired by its belief that ideological hegemony is never absolute and that all ideology at some
point contradicts itself, cultural materialism reads texts for signs of subversion (is another way of
saying rejection.
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THANK YOU!

Subject : LIT 201 Submit by : GROUP 6

GROUP 6 MEMBERS:
SANTOS, JOHN LLOYD
SAZO, DIANA DEE

SENEREZ, ARIANE MARIE

TACULIN, AJ SOPHIA

TORREON, ERICH VON

TUNDAG, DIANNA
YHUAN, JOHN CARLO