GEORGE ORWELL: A REASSESSMENT Also by Peter Buitenhuis The Grasping Imagination: the American Writings of Henry James The Great War of Words: British, American and Canadian Fiction and Propaganda, 1914-1933 Selected Poems of E. J. Pratt (editor) Also by Ira B. Nadel Biography: Fiction, Fact and Form Joyce and the Jews: Culture and Texts Gertrude Stein and the Making of Literature (co-editor) George Orwell: A Reassesstnent Edited by Peter Buitenhuis Professor of English Simon Fraser University and Ira B. Nadel Professor of English University of British Columbia M MACMILLAN PRESS © Peter Buitenhuis and Ira B. Nadel 1988 Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1st edition 1988 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended), or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 33-4 Alfred Place, London WC1E 7DP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1988 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG212XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world Typeset by Wessex Typesetters (Division of The Eastem Press Ltd) Frorne, Sornerset British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data George Orwell: a reassessment: 1. Orwell, George-Criticism and interpretation I. Buitenhuis, Peter 11. Nadel, Ira Bruce 823'.912 PR6029.R87 ISBN 978-1-349-19589-3 ISBN 978-1-349-19587-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-19587-9 Contents Acknowledgements vii Notes on the Contributors viii Preface xi Peter Buitenhuis and Ira B. Nadel INTRODUCTION Orwell and English Socialism 3 Bernard Crick PART ONE: NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR 1 George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four: The Future that 23 Becomes the Past Samuel L. Macey 2 From History to Psychological Grotesque: The Politics 32 of Sado-Masochism in Nineteen Eighty-Four Mason Harris 3 Room 101 Revisited: The Reconciliation of Political and 51 Psychological Dimensions in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty- Four Erika Gottlieb 4 False Freedom and Orwell's Faust-Book Nineteen 77 Eighty-Four Gerald A. Morgan PART TWO: LANGUAGE AND POLITICS 5 Words, Deeds and Things: Orwell's Quarrel with 93 Language Paul Delany 6 Bentham and Basic English: The 'Pious Founders' of 102 Newspeak Mary fo Morris v vi Contents 7 Orwell and the Language: Speaking the Truth in 114 Homage to Catalonia John Ferns 8 Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Mao's Cultural 126 Revolution F. Quei Quo PART THREE: LITERARY CRITICISM 9 Orwell and Eliot: Politics, Poetry and Prose 139 Graham Good 10 Orwell as Literary Critic: A Reassessment 157 Michael L. Ross Panel Discussion 178 Notes and References 188 Index 201 Acknowledgements The editors and publishers wish to thank Harcourt Brace Jovano- vich, Inc., and A. M. Heath Ltd, on behalf of the Estate of the late Sonia Brownell Orwell and Seeker and Warburg Ltd, who have kindly given permission to quote extracts from the following: Nineteen Eighty-Four, Wigan Pier, The Lion and the Unicorn and Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell; and The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters edited by Sonia Brownell Orwell and Ian Angus. vii Notes on the Contributors Peter Buitenhuis is Professor of English at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia. He is the author of The Grasping Imagination: the American Writings of Henry James (1970), and of The Great War of Words: British, American, and Canadian Fiction and Propaganda; 1914- 1933. He has published numerous articles on American and Canadian fiction. Bernard Crick is Professor Emeritus of Politics of Birkbeck College, London University. He retired early to live in Scotland and to work on a trilogy on the nations of the British Isles. His George Orwell: A Life won the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Award in 1980, and his In Defence of Politics has been in print since 1964. He produced a critical text with commentary of Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1984. Paul Delany is Professor of English at Simon Fraser University. He is author of British Autobiography in the Sixteenth Century (1969), D. H. Lawrence's Nightmare: the Writer and his Circle in the Great War (1978), and of The Neo-Pagans (1986). John Ferns, Professor of English at McMaster University, Ontario, is author of A. J. M. Smith (1979) and of four volumes of poetry: The Antlered Boy (1970), Henry Hudson (1975), The Snow Horses (1977), and From the River . .. (1985). He is the editor, with Brian Crick, of George Whalley's Studies in Literature and the Humanities: Innocence of Intent (1985). Graham Good teaches English at the University of British Colum- bia. The Observing Self: Studies in the Essay is forthcoming and he has published numerous essays on George Orwell. Erika Gottlieb teaches at Seneca College in Toronto and has published several essays on modem literature. She is now at work on a book on Orwell. Mason Harris is Associate Professor of English at Simon Fraser University, where he has been teaching since 1966. He has published articles on Victorian fiction and science fiction, and is viii Notes on the Contributors ix working on a book on psychology and class in anti-utopian fiction in the tradition of H. G. Wells. Samuel L. Macey is Professor of English at the University of Victoria. His books include an edition of Henry Carey's Dramatic Works, a volume (with R. G. Lawrence) Studies in Robertson Davies Deptford Trilogy, and he is the author of Clocks and the Cosmos: Time in Western Life and Thought. His Patriarchs of Time: Dualism in Saturn- Cronos, Father Time, the Watchmaker God, and Father Christmas is to be published by the University of Georgia Press. Gerald A. Morgan is Professor Emeritus of Royal Roads Military College, Victoria, B.C.He has published papers on topics as diverse as Aristotle, Calderon, Conrad, Hopkins, Marlowe, Tiutchev, and Zamyatin. Mary Jo Morris is completing her doctoral dissertation at the University of Toronto. This is her first publication. Ira B. Nadel, Professor of English at the University of British Columbia, is the author of Biography: Fiction, Fact and Form (1984), Joyce and the Jews: Culture and Texts (1988), and editor, with Shirley Neuman, of Gertrude Stein and the Making of Literature (1988). He has published articles on George Eliot, Dickens, Beerbohm, Strachey and Joyce. He is also co-editor of The Journal of Pre- Raphaelite and Aesthetic Studies. F. Quei Quo is Professor of Political Science at Simon Fraser University. He is the author of Political Systems: An Introductory Analysis (1972) and co-editor of Parliament, Policy and Representation (1980). He has published many articles on the politics of Pacific Rim countries. Michael L. Ross is Associate Professor of English at McMaster University, Ontario. He has published on a variety of topics in nineteenth- and twentieth-century English literature. A recent essay deals with the relation between D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover and Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.