Conspiracy of Good Taste
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Conspiracy of Good Taste: William Morris, Cecil Sharp, Clough Williams-Ellis and the Repression of Working Class Culture in the 20th Century (1993) is a book by Stefan Szczelkun
Bibliography
- Footnote: My key book sources were: E. P. Thompson's William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary (1955); Dave Harker's 'Fakesong: the manufacture of British folksong 1700 to the present day' (1985), for Cecil Sharp; Dennis Hardy and Colin Ward's, 'Arcadia for All: the legacy of a makeshift landscape' (1984), for an account of the 'Plotland' self-build that Williams-Ellis opposed; Howard Caygil's 'Art of Judgement' (1989), was m y main source for a history of taste through the writings of German and English philosophers. --http://www.stefan-szczelkun.org.uk/taste/CGT-abstract.html [May 2006]
Blurb:
“The Conspiracy of Good Taste is a passionate analysis of the way working class culture has been appropriated and sanitised by middle class mediators of taste. Using the case studies of William Morris, Cecil Sharp and Clough William-Ellis, Szczelkun challenges their often widely seen role as enlightened political artists. He persuasively argues that there is a classist agenda that includes concepts of good taste that amount to oppression of true working class culture. The work also grapples with class identity as a context for the author’s critique. The book will certainly have you thinking carefully about taste, class and who dictates what is accepted culture. The book is tightly written, very readable and is a good start to exploring Szczelkun’s other work.” Richard Turner
See also
