Terms of High Culture
Looking back to literary criticism in the late 19th century we find Matthew Arnold’s work, including Culture and Anarchy and Essays in Criticism, in which he advances his beliefs that literature may be judged objectively, that a perfect society is attainable through intellectualism, and that the instrument of social perfection is the state. He is the one that borrowed the term “Philistines” from Goethe to describe the middle class in need of civilization.
I’m no authority on Arnold, so until I read more of his work, I’ll refrain from saying any more about that. What I find strikingly relevant to my project is the appropriation of a word etymologically related to “Palestine” and defined by the OED as “A member of a non-Semitic people occupying the southern coast of Palestine in biblical times, who came into conflict with the Israelites during the 12th and 11th centuries B.C.” and further explained thus: “The Philistines were a people (suggested to have been of western Anatolian origin) who came into the Levant in the period c1370-1200 B.C. as one of the ‘Peoples of the Sea’ mentioned in Egyptian texts of c1180 B.C. They settled in south-western Canaan in the 12th cent. B.C. and from there expanded inland, establishing control over their neighbours (this is reflected in the biblical saga of the Israelite leader Samson, who was betrayed to the Philistines by Delilah). The Old Testament describes the defeat of the Philistines by David, who slew the Philistine giant Goliath (1 Sam. 17) and records intermittent conflict between the Philistines and their neighbours until the period of Assyrian domination.”
It all reminds me of the movie 300 and the blatant demoralization of the Middle Eastern enemy.
The American Library Association was made up of mostly male, elitist WASP’s who were of the same mind as Arnold and other writers of the time. They believed that their obligation was to promote the good of the society by providing only “good” literature, and they advised American libraries on literature worthy of being placed on the shelves.
