All Art is Propaganda: Critical Essays

by George Orwell

As a critic, George Orwell cast a wide net. Equally at home discussing Charles Dickens and Charlie Chaplin, he moved back and forth across the porous borders between essay and journalism, high art and low. A frequent commentator on literature, language, film, and drama throughout his career, Orwell turned increasingly to the critical essay in the 1940s, when his most important experiences were behind him and some of his most incisive writing lay ahead. <i>All Art Is Propaganda</i> follows Orwell as he demonstrates in piece after piece how intent analysis of a work or body of work gives rise to trenchant aesthetic and philosophical commentary."how to be interesting, line after line."<br /><br />Contents:<br />Charles Dickens<br />Boys' Weeklies<br />Inside the Whale<br />Drama Reviews: <i>The Tempest, The Peaceful Inn</i><br />Film Review: <i>The Great Dictator</i><br />Wells, Hitler and the World State<br />The Art of Donald McGill<br />No, Not One<br />Rudyard Kipling<br />T.S. Eliot<br />Can Socialists Be Happy?<br />Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on Salvador Dali<br />Propaganda and Demotic Speech<br />Raffles and Miss Blandish<br />Good Bad Books<br />The Prevention of Literature<br />Politics and the English Language<br />Confessions of a Book Reviewer<br />Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of <i>Gulliver's Travels</i><br />Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool<br />Writers and Leviathan<br />Review of <i>The Heart of the Matter</i> by Graham Greene<br />Reflections on Gandhi