High Culture

High culture is a term, now used in a number of different ways in academic discourse, whose most common meaning is the set of cultural products, mainly in the arts, held in the highest esteem by a culture.

In more popular terms, it is the culture of an elite such as the aristocracy or intelligentsia, but also defined as a repository of a broad cultural knowledge, as a way of transcending the class system. It is contrasted with the low culture or popular culture of, variously, the less well-educated, barbarians, Philistines, or the masses.

Read more about High Culture:  Concept, High Art, Art Music, Promotion of High Culture, Theoreticians

Famous quotes containing the words high and/or culture:

    Though with their high wrongs I am struck to the quick,
    Yet with my nobler reason ‘gainst my fury
    Do I take part. The rarer action is
    In virtue than in vengeance.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    We now have a whole culture based on the assumption that people know nothing and so anything can be said to them.
    Stephen Vizinczey (b. 1933)