In each of these texts, how does the theorist define these terms (history, progress, and change) and what relationship does the theorist envision between these terms? Discuss the writings of each theorist one-by-one and focus your critical analysis on quotations from the texts.

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Comparative literature: Marx-Engels, Gramsci, Matthew Arnold

This essay has three parts:

1. In the first part of your essay (approx. 1600 words), analyse how different views of progress, history, and social change inform two or more of the following texts:

• Marx and Engels’ The Communist Manifesto

• Marx and Engels, ‘Selections of Their Writings’ in Cultural Theory and Popular Culture

• Matthew Arnold’s ‘Culture and Anarchy’

• Gramsci’s The Prison Notebooks

In each of these texts, how does the theorist define these terms (history, progress, and change) and what relationship does the theorist envision between these terms? Discuss the writings of each theorist one-by-one and focus your critical analysis on quotations from the texts.

2. In the second part of the essay (approx. 1000 words), analyse the relationship between intellectuals, ‘élites’, and the rest of the society in two or more theorists:

• Marx and Engels

• Gramsci

• Matthew Arnold

Make sure to base your critical response on quotes from the text, paying particular attention to questions of form, style, aims, and contextual differences between chosen texts.

3. In the third part of your essay (approx. 900 words), discuss one of the articles in relation to one or more of the following concepts:

• ‘ideology’ (Marx and Engels)

• ‘hegemony’ (Gramsci)

• ‘organic intellectuals’ (Gramsci)

• culture (Arnold)

Provide a brief summary of the article first, and then discuss one or more of the binaries as discussed by the relevant theorist in relation to the article.

Choose one:

• Article 1: David Herman, ‘Whatever happened to the public intellectual?’, New Statesman

https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2017/01/whatever-happened-public-intellectual

• Article 2: David Sessions, ‘The Rise of the Thought Leader: How the superrich have funded a new class of intellectual,’ New Republic

https://newrepublic.com/article/143004/rise-thoughtleader-how-superrich-funded-new-class-intellectual

• Article 3: Roger Scruton, ‘The great swindle: From pickled sharks to compositions in silence, fake ideas and fake emotions have elbowed out truth and beauty’, Aeon

https://aeon.co/essays/a-cult-of-fakery-has-taken-over-what-s-left-of-high-culture

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