Our collective notion of the city and country is irresistibly powerful. The city as the seat of enlightenment, power and greed is in profound contrast with an innocent, peaceful, backward countryside. Examining literature since the sixteenth century, this book traces the development of our conceptions of these two traditional poles of life. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY TRISTRAM HUNTOur collective notion of the city and country is irresistibly powerful. The city as the seat of enlightenment, sophistication, power and greed is in profound contrast with an innocent, peaceful, backward countryside. Examining literature since the sixteenth century, Williams traces the development of our conceptions of these two traditional poles of life. His groundbreaking study casts the country and city as central symbols for the social and economic changes associated with capitalist development
Available: Online
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While written with the energy of political engagement, it is a critically generous book... Even where you would read something differently, there is space to disagree
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Guardian||"His complex character, indeed his whole life, was held together by two qualities - scholarship and political conviction - which made him a major influence on three decades of political thought"
Independent||"I went back to my own edition ofThe Country and the City...Certain books are held dear because they are also psychic landmarks revealing where and how they helped us come into consciousness. Inevitably, our perception of the world continues to be informed by such texts long after the precise details of their contents have been forgotten."
New Statesman||"He was the foremost political thinker of his generation in Britain who in his most formidable books,Culture And Society,The Long RevolutionandThe Country and the City, redrew the map of our cultural history, and elsewhere made heroic interventions in the main political debates of his time"
Guardian||"The first thing that struck me about this book when I read it as an undergraduate was the personable charm of the narrator. Embarking on a topic which could hardly be broader or grander: the study of how literature has described the world; he starts with his own country, with his own city. His emotion about his birthplace his sense of belonging, is so powerful, that the book reads at times like an autobiography, like a love-letter to the country of his childhood"
Independent
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY TRISTRAM HUNT
'A major influence on three decades of political thought'Independent
Our collective notion of the city and country is irresistibly powerful. The city as the seat of enlightenment, sophistication, power and greed is in profound contrast with an innocent, peaceful, backward countryside. By examining literature since the sixteenth century, Williams traces the development of our conceptions of these two traditional poles of life. His groundbreaking study casts the country and city as central symbols for conceptualizing the social and economic changes associated with capitalist development.
See also:Culture and Society