Didst thou ever see a white bear? cried my father, turning his head round to Trim, who stood at the back of his chair:——No, an' please your honor, replied the corporal.——But thou could'st discourse about one, Trim, said my father, in case of need?——How is it possible, brother, quoth my uncle Toby, if the corporal never saw one?——'Tis the fact I want, said my father—and the possibility of it, is as follows.
(Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy V:xlii.
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Wednesday, March 30, 2011

For Credit: Working-Class Literature Follow-Up


On Wednesday, we looked at the four readings in class and discussed how they fit in to the whole of working-class literature and in the era of literature we've been discussing this semester. Below are two main ideas; feel free to reply to either.

The last point we brought up was that Yearsley and Leapor, the female writers we examined, were aware of the fact that they had little to no chance of social mobility and wrote from that perspective. Dodsley, as a male writer, had a higher chance of being able to move up the social ladder, and we believe that this was reflected in his writing. The category of "working-class writers," then, breaks down into smaller categories, just as the category of "the working class" can be broken down into any number of categories. Do you agree that this gender gap is displayed throughout these works (and the other works we've studied)? Are there other differences between Dodsley's works and the Leapor/Yearsley poems that can be attributed to the genders of the authors?

One final question revolves around the idea of authorship. The replies to our previous blog post have shown that our class has a wide range of opinions on the question of whether an author's background matters. What if, as Kirstin suggested in class, we found Ann Yearsley's poem in an anthology of poetry and had no information about the author? For one, we could no longer definitively relate her claims of feeling unequal to those around her to what we know about her class, but what would this do to the poem? What would our class discussion on the poem (assuming it were part of our syllabus) look like? Would the poem become less valuable, transformed from a work that speaks from the experiences of one working-class woman into a cute treatise on what friendship is?

As our past post suggested, in classroom settings, we don't always look at authorial background. We don't normally examine the love letters John Keats wrote in order to understand a little more about who he is and why he wrote his poems, for example. Part of this is due to the constraints of a classroom schedule, of course, but we tend to analyze the great works of English literature without using the lens of biographical information. Should we? Do we treat the great writers of literary history unfairly by not looking at their backgrounds, or are we doing a disservice to less-notable writers like Yearsley and Leapor a disservice by limiting our interpretations of their works to what we know about their backgrounds?

Any other thoughts on Wednesday's discussion, the works we looked at, or working-class literature in general are also welcome.

1 comment:

lexijoma1 said...

The difference I see in the works that may be attributed to the gender of the authors has mainly to do with their audience. While Dodsley seems to be writing to a very specific audience I would say that it seems that the women authors, Leapor and Yearsley, seem to be doing that less.I am not exactly sure why that is but I woudl guess it has to do with the ability to social climb. Certainly in that period the ability to do this was more of a reality for men than women and I think that had some effect on the authors work. For instance Dodsley, who was clearly writing to an audience had less flexibility in his writing and had to keep the piece directed toward a particular group. While Yearsley, who had no real expectationof being able to social climb through her work seemed to be able to write for herself more so than to a particular audience. she seemed to be less constrained. I would argue that this is what makes her piece a more timeless and deserving of being cannonized then Dodsley. Because she was not bound by the perameters of a particular audience her poem seems to transcend the bounds of her social situation.

As for the question about doing authors a diservce by not being informed on their biographical information when we consider their literature; I would say no we are not. While I find it really helpful to know this information while considering literature, it is not always needed. Like was discussed in class some themes are over-reaching and this info is not needed. It makes me think of the week we were talking about print culture. I forget who said it but someone said that once an author realeases a book to print it is finished, they have no more input on it. I think this is true, so much of what a piece of literature means has to do with the reader and not the author. Just as they were writing through a particular lens we are reading through one. Once it is out of the author's hands it is ours to interpret. I think there is value in both ways to look at it.