
George Orwell is watching you and you're watching him. Britain pays its respects in the form of the Orwell Prize, the Orwell Lecture, and, more recently, Orwell Day. A statue of Orwell now stands outside Broadcasting House in London and he continues to tower over broadsheet journalism. His ghost is repeatedly summoned in the houses of Parliament and in schools across Britain. In Europe and the US, citizens confront the perennial question: "What would Orwell say?" Orwell is part of the political vocabulary of our times, yet partly due to this popularity, what he stands for remains opaque. His writing confirms deep and widely shared intuitions about political justice, but much of its enduring fascination derives from the fact that these intuitions don't quite add up. David Dwan accounts for these inconsistencies by exploring the broader moral conflict at the centre of Orwell's work and the troubled idealism it yields. Examining the whole sweep of Orwell's writings, this book shows how literature can be a rich source of political wisdom.
How do the apparent contradictions in George Orwell's political thought reflect a deeper, unresolved moral conflict within his work? David Dwan, a scholar of literature and political thought, investigates the tension between Orwell's widely held intuitions regarding justice and the logical inconsistencies found throughout his corpus. By analyzing the entirety of Orwell's writing, Dwan argues that these inconsistencies are not mere errors but are central to understanding the author's troubled idealism and his unique contribution to political discourse.
What You Will Find
Scope Limits
Critics and scholars identify this work as a rigorous intellectual examination that moves beyond the common, simplified interpretations of Orwell's political legacy. Readers frequently note the academic density of the prose, which serves as a significant resource for those interested in the intersection of literature and political philosophy.
Page Count:
320
Publication Date:
2018-01-01
Publisher:
OUP Oxford
ISBN-10:
0191082015
ISBN-13:
9780191082016
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