Title: The Bias of “Paradoxes”: A Study of Raymond Williams’s Criticism on George Orwell

Abstract: Raymond Williams’s criticism on Orwell lasted for 30 years and turned all the more hostile. According to Williams, Orwell and his works were a complex of “paradoxes”: Orwell intended to be committed to the society but constantly felt alienated; he tried to build connection with proletarians but always failed to do so, and these paradoxes were fundamentally related to his “ruling-class” identity and ultimately threw him into despair. Based upon Orwell’s life details and writings, this thesis attempts a critical analysis of “Williams’s Orwell,” revealing Williams’s complex feelings dominated by “anxiety of influence”, refuting all kinds of biases caused by Williams’s class-determined perspective, and aiming for a clarification of the major misunderstandings of Orwell and his works.

Keywords: Raymond Williams, George Orwell, criticism, paradoxes, bias

Author: Shouyi Luo, Lecturer, School of Foreign Studies, Nanjing Audit University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China.

DOI: 10.19967/j.cnki.flc.2024.01.001