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Nineteen Eighty-Four And The Poetics Of "Orthodoxy-Sniffing", Mark R. Myers

Student Work

Despite his reputation as a political writer, George Orwell exhibited an earnest appreciation for the aesthetic aspect of his craft while explicitly advocating creative independence for artists living in a hyper-politicized world. This paper explores Orwell's literary credo insofar as it matters amid an increasingly urgent flight of artists and critics into the nest of political orthodoxy. Sacrificing objective and query to “orthodoxy-sniffing” critics of his time dismissed writers and works of art whose politics clash with their own. Creative writers, too, sacrificed their artistic vision to the constrictive demands of party ideology. In this atmosphere, or well fashioned a …