Literature and Class: From the Peasants’ Revolt to the French Revolution - Rilegato

Hadfield, Andrew

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 1526125838 ISBN 13: 9781526125835

Casa editrice: Manchester Univ Pr, 2021

Riassunto

This book explores the intimate relationship between literature and class in England (and later Britain) from the Peasants’ Revolt at the end of the fourteenth century to the impact of the French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century and beginning of the nineteenth. The book argues throughout that class cannot be seen as a modern phenomenon that occurred after the Industrial revolution but that class divisions and relations have always structured societies and that it makes sense to assume a historical continuity. The book explores a number of themes relating to class: class consciousness; class conflict; commercialisation; servitude; rebellion; gender relations; and colonisation. After outlining the history of class relations, five chapters explore the ways in which social class consciously and unconsciously influenced a series of writers: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Behn, Rochester, Defoe, Duck, Richardson, Burney, Blake and Wordsworth.

Su questo libro

Informazioni sull?autore

Andrew Hadfield is Professor of English at the University of Sussex

Dalla quarta di copertina

'Andrew Hadfield’s timely and important study addresses a crucial category that is less debated and arguably far less understood than race or gender. This is a formidable study – bold, ambitious, and original – and one that promises to augment significantly our knowledge of a key category of human existence.'
Professor Willy Maley, University of Glasgow

'Archivally rich and theoretically sophisticated, this is the exploration of English literature and social class we desperately need. Conceiving of class in terms derived from Akala as well as Marx, Mary Collier as well as E. P. Thompson and Gareth Stedman Jones, Hadfield shows irrefutably how intimations of class differences and class struggle evolved long before the Industrial Revolution.'
Professor Donna Landry, FRAS, Rutherford College, University of Kent


This book explores the intimate relationship between literature and class in England (and later Britain), and demonstrates how literary texts are determined by class relations and how they represent the interaction of classes in profound and apparently trivial ways. It argues throughout that class cannot be seen as a modern phenomenon that occurred after the Industrial revolution, but that class divisions and relations have always structured societies, and it makes sense to assume a historical continuity.

The book explores a number of themes relating to class: class consciousness; class conflict; commercialisation; servitude; the relationship between agrarian and urban society; rebellion; gender relations; and colonisation. After outlining the history of class relations in England and, after the union of 1707, Scotland, five chapters explore the ways in which social class consciously and unconsciously influenced a series of writers including Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, John Taylor, Robert Herrick, Aphra Behn, John Wilmot, earl of Rochester, Daniel Defoe, Stephen Duck, Mary Collier, Frances Burney, Robert Burns, William Blake and William Wordsworth. Literature and class concludes with Percy Bysshe Shelley’s An Address to the Irish People (1812), pointing to the need to explore class relations in the context of the British Isles and Ireland, as well as the British Empire, which a future work will analyse.

Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: Manchester Univ Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2021
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 1526125838
• ISBN 13: 9781526125835
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 331
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile