Practice question · Multiple choice
Raymond Williams shows that the modern sense of 'literature' narrowed to imaginative art around 1800. What consequence follows from this historical shift for non-fictional prose?
Hints
- When a boundary is drawn around the 'creative', what label falls on everything left outside?
- Does changing a cultural definition erase a text's utility, or merely alter its prestige?
Show the answer
C. It relegated essays and history to an implicitly non-creative status
Why
Williams argues that enclosing imaginative writing within 'literature' created an opposite category, framing philosophy, history, and science as purely utilitarian rather than artful. It altered value judgements, not curriculum survival.
Practise Literary Study Among the Disciplines
The app has 3 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Literature I is free to start.
More questions on Literary Study Among the Disciplines
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