Class and the Canon Constructing Labouring-Class Poetry and Poetics, 1780-1900 [Hardcover]

Examining how labouring-class poets constructed themselves and were constructed by critics as part of a canon, and how they situated their work in relation to contemporaries and poets from earlier periods, this book highlights the complexities of labouring-class poetic identities in the period from Burns to mid-late century Victorian dialect poets.Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction; K.Blair Was Burns a Labouring-Class Poet?; N.Leask Constructing the Ulster Labouring-Class Poet: The Case of Samuel Thomson; J.Orr Sociable or Solitary? John Clare, Robert Bloomfield, Community and Isolation; J.Goodridge John Clare and the Triumph of Little Things; M.Gorji 'No more than as an atom 'mid the vast profound: Conceptions of Time in the Poetry of William Cowper, William Wordsworth, and Ann Yearsley; K.Andrews The Pen and the Hammer: Thomas Carlyle, Ebenezer Elliott, and the 'active poet'; M.Waithe Samuel Ferguson's Maudlin Jumble; M.Campbell Courtly Lays or Democratic Songs? The Politics of Poetic Citation in Chartist Literary Criticism; M.Sanders Edwin Waugh: The Social and Literary Standing of a Working-Class Icon; B.Hollingworth William Barnes's Place and Dialects of Connection; S.Edney Index

This paradigm shifting collection of essays is to be recommended to anyone interested in the interface between literature and history. The editors are to be congratulated on bringing together such an impressive cast of contributors. There are ground-breaking readings of familiar figures such as Ann Yearsley and John Clare and fascinating analyses of less familar ones such as Samuel Thomson. But what really sets this volume apart is the profound attention given to the complex relations between class and canon. The editors have put these topics back where they belong, right at the heart of critical debate. Gary Day, Principal Lecturer in English, De Montfort University, UK

By complicating the notion of class, Blair and Gorji's outstanding colls3