Literature and Class : From the Peasants' Revolt to the French Revolution

Hadfield, Andrew

Manchester University Press（2025/06発売）

Manchester University Press（2025/06発売）

• 製本 Paperback:紙装版/ペーパーバック版／ページ数 352 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9781526191144
• DDC分類 820.93550903

Full Description

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.

Contents

Introduction: Hidden in Plain Sight
1 Class in England From the Late Middle Ages to the End of the Eighteenth Century
2 Perceptions of Class in the Late Middle Ages
3 Class Struggle in Renaissance Literature
4 The Civil War and Its Aftermath
5 An Increasingly Commercial Society, 1700-1750
6 Gathering Pace: Towards the Revolutions, 1750-1798
Epilogue: Shelley in Ireland
Bibliography
Index