High Culture - Concept

Concept

Although it has a longer history in Continental Europe, the term was introduced into English largely with the publication in 1869 of Culture and Anarchy by Matthew Arnold, although he most often uses just "culture". Arnold defined culture as "the disinterested endeavour after man's perfection" (Preface) and most famously wrote that having culture meant to "know the best that has been said and thought in the world"—a specifically literary definition, also embracing Philosophy, which is now rather less likely to be considered an essential component of High Culture, at least in the English-speaking cultures. Arnold saw high culture as a force for moral and political good, and in various forms this view remains widespread, though far from uncontested. The term is contrasted with popular culture or mass culture and also with folk culture, but by no means implies hostility to these.

T. S. Eliot's Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948) was an influential work which saw high culture and popular culture as necessary parts of a complete culture. The Uses of Literacy by Richard Hoggart (1957) was an influential work along somewhat the same lines, concerned with the cultural experience of those, like himself, who had come from a working-class background before university. In America, Harold Bloom has taken a more exclusive line in a number of works, as did F. R. Leavis earlier—both, like Arnold, being mainly concerned with literature, and unafraid to champion vociferously the literature of the Western canon.

In both the Western and some East Asian traditions, art that demonstrates the imagination of the artist has been accorded the highest status. In the West this tradition goes back to the Ancient Greeks, and was reinforced in the Renaissance and by Romanticism, although the latter also did away with the hierarchy of genres within the fine arts established in the Renaissance. In China there was a distinction between the amateur literati painting of the scholar-officials and the work produced by professional artists, working in largely different styles, or the decorative arts such as Chinese porcelain which were produced by unknown craftsmen working in large factories. In both China and the West the distinction was especially clear in landscape painting, where for centuries imaginary views, produced from the imagination of the artist, were considered superior to works reproducing an actual view.

High Culture in Western Civilization

In the Western tradition high culture has historical origins in the intellectual and aesthetic ideals of ancient Greece and Rome. Within this classical ideal certain authors and their modes of language were held up as models of an elevated style and good form as for instance the Attic dialect of ancient Greek associated with the great philosophers and dramatists of Periclean Athens, or Ciceronian Latin. Later especially during the Renaissance these values were deeply imbibed by cultural elites, and as evinced in works like The Courtier by Baldasare Castiglione, knowledge of the classics became part of the aristocratic ideal. Over time the refined classicism of the Renaissance was expanded to embrace a broader canon of authors in the modern languages that included figures such as Shakespeare, Goethe, and Cervantes.

For centuries an immersion in high culture was deemed an essential part of the proper education of "the gentleman" and this ideal was transmitted through elite schools and institutions throughout Europe and the United States. As it has evolved Western notions of high culture have been associated at various times with: The study of "humane letters" especially the Greek and Latin classics and more broadly all works considered to be part of "the canon"; the cultivation of refined etiquette and manners; an appreciation of the fine arts - especially sculpture and painting; a knowledge of such literature, drama, and poetry considered to be of high caliber; enjoyment of European classical music and opera; religion and theology often with a special focus on Europe's predominantly Christian tradition; rhetoric and politics; the study of philosophy and history; a taste for gourmet cuisine and wine; being well traveled and especially "The Grand Tour of Europe"; certain sports associated with elites such as polo, horsemanship, fencing, and yachting.