GRAD > ENGL > 643

Literature of the British Working Classes

Description:
One of the most vibrant periods of nineteenth-century British literature emerged out of Victorian writers and artists engagement with the contentious Condition of England debate. The myriad problems of urbanization, poverty, low wages, redundancy, poor sanitation, and overpopulation (to name just a few) drew writers and artists from all of the literate classes into print. This course pays particular attention to the politics of representation as we move between works by working-, middle-, and gentry class writers and artists, paying particular attention to the ways that working-class writers represent themselves through and against popular literary and artistic renderings of workers by others. We begin by concentrating on the explosion of literature by and about the working classes in the Hungry Forties. We visit the numerous sites that inspired their broadsides, ballads, poetry, fiction, non-fiction prose, and visual art: the sickroom, the servants quarters, the mine, the factory, and the mill, among others. The course is organized around particularly charged issues for those engaged in the debates around the Condition of England. Voyeurism and the Flaneur, Immigration, Chartist Poetry and Protest, the New Poor Law, Labor Unions, Redundant Woman, and Child Labor.

Offered in:

TBA