The Significance of ‘Bloomsbury’ as a Social and Cultural Group

(In)discreet Modernism: T. S. Eliot's Coterie Poetics

“…Aside from the question of their motivating politics, the biggest difference between Bürger's avant-garde and my coterie is scale: the avant-garde attempts to "organize a new life praxis from a basis in art" in public ( 49), while the coterie does so-perhaps with more success-in private. 2 The trend can be traced back to Laurence Rainey's The Institutions of Modernism (1998) 5 The relationship between coterie and class is explored admirably and at greater length by Raymond Williams (1980). 6 Valerie Eliot's insistence-credited somewhat, it seems, by Stayer-that Eliot wrote no new Bolo verse after 1916 seems to distinguish between writing (the verb she uses) and revising.…”

Modern Art Patronage and Democratic Citizenship in Japan

“…The Wakimura brothers' belief in providing art to all without trying to define "better" kinds of art for other people was similar to that expressed by other elite, left-wing, twentieth-century cosmopolitans around the globe. As Raymond Williams (1978) has argued for the Bloomsbury group, which included the eminent economist John Maynard Keynes, the crucial issue for the Wakimura brothers was the freedom to choose a favorite style and thereby develop one's own aesthetic judgment. And, like the Bloomsbury group, Wakimura not only thought that providing such opportunities would help democratize the political as well as the cultural sphere, but also was similarly vague as to the precise point at which capitalism would end and postcapitalism would set in.…”