Richard Hoggart as literary critic

Abstract

This article shows how Hoggart uses a literary method to represent the working class and literary critical methodology to engage with popular culture. I examine Hoggart as a literary critic, using examples from his earliest book on Auden to show how the working-class intellectual engages with canonical literature in a ‘high’ art form and then I consider a range of his writings about literature to show the importance of literary criticism for Hoggart and his love of literature. This is important because love of literature and commitment to a rigorous literary critical method inform all Hoggart’s writing on culture. An understanding of his literary criticism is key to appreciating his cultural analysis and can also offer a way forward at a time when the literary may have been abandoned in the quest for the popular.