High culture is a term, now used in a number of different ways in academic discourse, whose most common meaning is the set of cultural products, mainly in the arts, held in the highest esteem by a culture.
In more popular terms, it is the culture of an elite such as the aristocracy or intelligentsia, but also defined as a repository of a broad cultural knowledge, as a way of transcending the class system. It is contrasted with the low culture or popular culture of, variously, the less well-educated, barbarians, Philistines, or the masses.
Read more about High Culture: Concept, High Art, Art Music, Promotion of High Culture, Theoreticians
Famous quotes containing the words high and/or culture:
“... it is high time that the women of Republican America should know how much the laws that govern them are like the slave laws of the South ...”
—Harriot K. Hunt (1805–1875)
“Insolent youth rides, now, in the whirlwind. For those modern iconoclasts who are without culture possess, apparently, all the courage.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945)