Teaching Laboring-Class British Literature of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
A Prospective Volume for the MLA Options for Teaching Series
Proposal--Revised March 2007
Kevin Binfield and Tim Burke
Overview of the Proposed Volume
This proposal requests that the Modern Language Association consider
for publication within its Options for Teaching Series a volume titled
“Teaching Laboring-Class British Literature of the Eighteenth and
Nineteenth Centuries.” The volume will serve as a resource
on materials, issues, and methods for teaching laboring-class
literature written in Britain during the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries.
Prospective Volume Editors
The prospective volume editors are Kevin Binfield, of Murray State
University, and Tim Burke, of Nottingham Trent University. Burke
is a specialist in eighteenth-century laboring-class poetry, having
published on Ann Yearsley, Robert Burns, Robert Bloomfield, and John
Clare, and having edited Volume Three of the Eighteenth-Century English Labouring-Class Poets
(London: Pickering and Chatto, 2003). Binfield specializes in
nineteenth-century laboring-class literature, having written on Joanna
Southcott, William Cobbett, and Robert Bloomfield and having edited Writings of the Luddites (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004). Both have also published on pedagogical issues.
Rationale for a Volume in this Field
The changes in the British literary canon over the last fifteen years
have generated not only reexaminations of literary production and
reception but also a new excitement about teaching a widening range of
literary texts. The changes include not only the addition to the
canon of authors such as Stephen Duck and John Clare but also new
class-based readings of established authors such as Ann Yearsley and
Robert Burns. Anne Janowitz, in Lyric and Labour in the Romantic Tradition
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), is but one of many
scholars who have called for a project of expansion beyond some of the
laboring-class authors who receive critical attention and whose work
appears in literature anthologies. More recently, Donna Landry
hails the publication of The Works of Mary Leapor
as an important step in the “movement to bring laboring-class
poetry to a somewhat broader audience than habitually hangs out among
the rare books of major research libraries.” We are seeing,
Landry thinks, “something of a radical
dissemination-in-progress” (Eighteenth-Century Studies 38.2 [2005]: 536]. Such projects of recovery and dissemination are underway.
The recovery of authors such as Leapor, the resuscitation of the
Romantic poet Robert Bloomfield and the Victorian poet Eliza Cook, and
the increasing interest in Chartist fiction promise that the literary
field will continue to change, as long as textual resources and
explorations of methods of study are available. New textual
resources are becoming available. One collection, The Blackwell Anthology of Eighteenth-Century Poetry
(Second Edition, 2003), edited by David Fairer and Christine Gerrard,
offers compelling evidence that "new" voices are now regularly heard
alongside those of more familiar, canonical names. (An index of
this anthology's challenge to traditional understandings of the
period's achievements is the editors' decision to represent Alexander
Pope with seven poems, Mary Leapor with seven, and Ann Yearsley with
four.) Ian Haywood's 1995 book, The Literature of Struggle: An Anthology of Chartist Fiction,
has generated considerable interest in Chartist prose, an interest
which continued in the completion of a three-volume set of Chartist
writings for Ashgate. The new Pickering and Chatto anthologies, Eighteenth-Century English Labouring-Class Poets and Nineteenth-Century English Labouring-Class Poets,
have laid foundations for other scholars to delve into a body of
literature that, until the publication of the anthologies, many did not
know existed.
Comprehensive, classroom anthologies are not yet widely available;
however, new anthologies have been published or are forthcoming.
Currently, most laboring-class literature anthologies center on the
Victorian period. Brian Maidment's 1992 collection, The Poorhouse Fugitives: Self-Taught Poets and Poetry in Victorian Britain, is still available. Rick Simmons's Factory Lives: Four Nineteenth-Century British Working-Class Autobiographies, published by Broadview, and Florence Boos's Victorian Working-Class Women Poets
anthology, forthcoming from Broadview in 2007, will provide texts for
the study of the Victorian period. Affordable volumes of single
poets exist, but they are not widely known: The 1998 Trent
Edition of Robert Bloomfield: Selected Poems, Simon Kovesi's editions of John Clare's Love Poems (1999) and Flower Poems (2001), and a new Badger edition of Ben Brierley's Spring Blossoms and Autumn Leaves
stand as examples. A number of anthologies are currently under
development. Furthermore, many key
laboring-class texts are available online already.
The textual foundations are being laid, but the structure for teaching
and studying laboring-class literature has yet to be developed.
Need for this Volume
The general project of textual recovery has been accompanied by
interest in exploring methods of teaching work by the newly recovered
authors. The clearest example of such pedagogical interest can be
found in the area of recovered women's writing, and the example is
worth considering for a moment. The anthologization of
rediscovered women poets of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has
been an established fact for two decades, and, within the past ten
years, questions of teaching works by those poets have driven a fair
amount of pedagogical inquiry in those period disciplines.
Stephen C. Behrendt and Harriet Kramer Linkin's Approaches to Teaching British Women Poets of the Romantic Period (New York: MLA, 1997), an issue of the journal Pedagogy
(Volume 1, Number 1, 2000) devoted to examining matters of teaching a
literary canon that has expanded to include women poets, and Susanne
Woods and Margaret Hannay's Teaching Tudor and Stuart Women Writers
(New York: MLA, 2001) stand as evidence that explorations of methods of
teaching work by newly recovered women writers have been
necessary. The same need exists in the case of recovered
laboring-class writers.
The textual recovery of laboring-class writers of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries may be today at a slightly earlier stage than the
recovery of British women writers was when the scholarship on those
writers turned to pedagogy; however, the time is ripe for a sustained
study of methods of teaching laboring-class writers. Anthologies
typically require some pedagogical thinking, and Rick Simmons's
Broadview anthology, like all Broadview volumes, is intended for
classroom use. If the new interest in laboring-class literature
is to be sustained, the recovered literature must find its way into
classrooms. Instructors will welcome ideas on how to incorporate
laboring-class writers into existing courses and how to develop new
courses.
There has not yet been enough scholarly investigation of options for
teaching laboring-class literature, even though instructors are
introducing students to that literature and scholars are producing
anthologies. The case of John Clare, now a mainstay of
nineteenth-century survey courses, is particularly important. His
poetry is often taught in ways that powerfully broaden notions of
Romanticism by emphasizing aspects of his discontinuity with its
canonical forms, but teaching Clare provides opportunities, as this
proposed volume will suggest, to see his works also as continuous with
an extant laboring-class tradition and as part of the important related
tradition of environmental writing which is increasingly taught in
university courses.
Both the Behrendt/Linkin and Woods/Hannay volumes will serve as models
for the development of this proposed volume. They also point,
through some individual essays, to the need for scholarly reflection on
teaching texts by previously under-represented writers, and we here
discuss in detail one telling example--an example that could be
especially germane to the proposed volume. Perhaps the
fundamental issue taken up in Approaches to Teaching British Women Poets of the Romantic Period
appears in Judith Pascoe's essay, "Strategies for Replacing the
Six-Poet Course"; that issue has to do with paying due deference to the
canon while providing students a fuller representation of the range of
literature written at the time. Pascoe begins her essay by
identifying the problem of adequacy of coverage that is at the heart of
teaching an expanded Romantic canon. Pascoe discusses a number of
strategies that she implemented, including centering courses on issues
of genre, gender, and history. She concludes, "The most tightly
focused and historically grounded classes I have taught have been the
most successful ones. Students like a grid in which to place the
knowledge they have been accumulating . . ." (Pascoe 62). That
"grid" enables Pascoe "to give Wordsworth his due in class time without
allowing him to become too normative a model of the Romantic poet . .
." (Pascoe 62). Pascoe herself suggests that incorporating
laboring-class writers into courses in Romanticism will create special
challenges in correcting the "short shrift" that under-represented
writers have received: "The names John Clare, Robert Bloomfield,
and George Crabbe remind us of Romantic-era experience not easily
subsumed under the rubric of the greater Romantic lyric" (Pascoe
58). In the Behrendt/Linkin volume, Pascoe, through advocating
focused thematic course design, and Scott Simpkins, through discussing
methods of engaging students in a reconsideration of "evaluative
criteria" (Simpkins, "Teaching Alien Aesthetics" 51) raise the question
of omission and inclusion and their effects upon classroom
understandings of "Romanticism." Similar questions of what
literature (if any) is normative, what represents human experiences,
what should be included, what should be omitted, and what is worth
reading must be, and will be, part of the proposed collection on
teaching laboring-class literature. It would be easy to imagine,
for example, an essay that discusses how a teacher might situate a
Wordsworthian ecology, revealed in "Tintern Abbey," "Michael," and
other poems, against the views of the countryside from within the
classes that labor in the countryside--views expressed by John Clare,
who makes clear the economic basis of rural life even while
acknowledging its beauty.
In the belief that teaching considerations ought to play a leading role
in the development of the emerging and exciting field of laboring-class
literature, the editors propose this volume.
Scope of the Volume
The proposed volume will explore issues in teaching literature by
British laboring-class writers in a variety of genres of the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries. Choosing to focus on teaching
literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has certain
advantages and avoids certain problems. Perhaps the primary
disadvantage avoided by excluding work written in the twentieth century
is that attempting to address the sheer mass of laboring-class
literature written from 1900 to the present would be
unmanageable. (The Nottingham Trent University Labouring-Class
Writers Index marks an explosion in numbers of laboring-class writers
after 1900.) An advantage in focusing on literature from 1700 to
1900 is addressing the issue of laboring-class attitudes and values
over the period identified by many scholars as the period of the
formation of a class consciousness. Another advantage is studying
laboring-class literature written when class divisions were more
clearly defined and the possibility of social mobility, particularly
through education, had not yet been realized. Certainly,
addressing how to teach the differences, transitions, and watersheds in
laboring-class life from 1700 to 1900 (including period boundaries) and
how those differences relate to the literature will be essential to
this volume.
The editors will take a broad view of literature to include forms, such
as the threatening letter, the political periodical essay, and the
polemical pamphlet, that often have not been considered to be
literary. Nevertheless, the editors are committed to literariness
as a category of analysis--that is, considering methods of teaching
literary and rhetorical elements in writing that has purposes quite
outside of traditional literariness. The study of canonical
literature has been quite liberal in application of the term
"literature." The editors will apply that same liberality in
soliciting contributions for the proposed volume. Mary
Wollstonecraft's Vindication has been taught as protest literature through many editions of the Norton anthology, and Alexander Pope's Dunciad
has been treated as a model of invective for centuries; similar
treatment of Luddite or Chartist protest writing and William Cobbett's
invective would be logical in the proposed volume. Contributions
to the proposed volume will, then, take up the issues of finding and
teaching literary and rhetorical elements in (among other forms)
protest writing, political propaganda, personal letters, and invective,
and in teaching the engagement of those written forms with the life,
culture, politics, and literature of the time.
The volume will also devote significant attention to definitions of
"laboring-class," not only in demographic and socio-economic terms but
also in terms of artistic and cultural significance. The
introduction and several essays will address class issues such as the
urban/rural divide; differences in class experience and written forms
between London and the provinces; the character of long-established
trades, such as spinning; the emergence of new trades, especially in
the new urban centers such as Manchester; the complicated status of
artisans, some of whom did not consider themselves to be members of the
laboring classes and others of whom, such as the croppers, considered
themselves to be the aristocrats of the skilled laboring classes; the
status of schoolteachers, many of whom, such as the poet Samuel
Thomson, emerged from the laboring classes; the role of education as a
determining or complicating factor in defining the laboring classes;
the usefulness of considering literary or intellectual communities and
circles in understanding what "laboring-class" means; and the
comparisons between writers' participating in laboring-class and
non-laboring-class circles (such as between James Orr's participation
in the circle of Ulster weaver-poets and William Blake's participation
in the Joseph Johnson circle).
The proposed volume will have a disciplinary scope that is, perhaps,
wider than other collections on teaching a body of literature.
The writers whose work this volume will address are defined by a
variety of disciplines that investigate the issue of social class, and
consideration of those investigations and their relevance to teaching
the literature will prove useful. The volume will, then, include
a great deal of interdisciplinary work, including work that establishes
historical, cultural, political, and economic contexts.
Goals of the Volume
The goals of this proposed volume are to provide an overview of issues
and opportunities in teaching laboring-class literature, to demonstrate
the range of methods and materials that are available, to facilitate
choices of texts, to suggest themes, to explore contexts for teaching
laboring-class literature, to provide resources for teaching, and to
discuss the relationship between teaching canonical and laboring-class
texts.
Topics Anticipated for Coverage in this Volume
The topics that the editors envision being covered in the volume follow
from the goals outlined above. We indicate those topics as a
prospective contents list below. The list is long to demonstrate
the range of pedagogical issues that might be examined; we recognize
that not all of the topics listed below can be covered in a volume that
falls within the Options for Teaching series parameters.
Furthermore, the list is suggestive rather than conclusive. Individual
titles and topics will be determined by individual contributors
considered within the framework of the entire collection. Many of
the general topics, such as "Teaching Laboring-Class Pastorals" and
"Laboring-Class Writers on Slavery," will be treated through particular
case studies of teaching works by individual writers such as, for the
georgic, either Stephen Duck or Robert Bloomfield, and, on slavery, Ann
Yearsley or Elizabeth Bentley, according to the desires and expertise
of the contributors. Contributions on teaching individual writers
may be tied to a particular issue or critical approach, such as
teaching John Clare as an environmental writer or teaching Ellen
Johnston through Cultural Materialism. A study of teaching
questions of literary quality might be conducted through a classroom
exercise in comparing Sir William Topaz McGonagal's disaster poems with
disaster poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins or Thomas Hardy.
A prospective contents list follows, immediately below. We wish
to emphasize that the final contents of the volume will depend in part
upon the opinions and essays of the many contributors.
Prospective Contents
Introduction (including overview of development of the field and definitions of parameters)
Materials for Teaching Laboring-Class Literature (anthologies, republished volumes, internet resources)
Timelines Useful for Placing Laboring-Class Writers in Period-Based Courses
Defining the Field
What Are the Laboring Classes?
The Urban/Rural Divide in Laboring-Class Experience
The Status of Artisans in Laboring-Class Life
Economic and Population Changes and the Effects on the Laboring Classes from 1700 to 1900
Literary Communities and Laboring-Class Participation
Education and the Laboring Classes
Radicalism and Laboring-Class Identity
Teaching the Forms of Laboring-Class Literature
The Varieties of Laboring-Class Writing and Challenges in Classification
Teaching Laboring-Class Poetry
Lyric
Pastorals
Georgic
Song and Ballad
Urban Forms
Dialogue
Complete Volumes of Verse
Teaching Laboring-Class Autobiography
Autobiographical Prose
Teaching Laboring-Class Poetry as Autobiography
Incorporating Laboring-Class Autobiography into Literature Courses
Teaching Laboring-Class Fiction
The Rise of the Laboring-Class Novel
Laboring-Class Fiction in Courses on the Novel
Teaching Chartist Fiction
Teaching Laboring-Class Protest Writing
The Periodical
The Threatening Letter
Industrial Protest--A Case Study of the Textile Protests
Agricultural Protest--A Case Study of the Captain Swing Riots
Chartism
Teaching Themes
Teaching Literary Quality--The Case of Sir William Topaz McGonagal
Laboring-Class Writers on Class (see also Representation and Self-presentation)
Laboring-Class Writers on Slavery
Laboring-Class Writers on Empire
Laboring-Class Writers and the Question of Nation
Laboring-Class Writing and Gender
Laboring-Class Writing and Religion
Representation and Self-presentation
The Writer's Occupation as a Pedagogical Issue
Teaching Literary Relationships and Patronage
Literacy Studies and Laboring-Class Writers
Robert Southey's "Uneducated Poets" and the Canonical Classroom
Teaching Wordsworth's Romanticized Poor with Laboring-Class Texts
Teaching Charlotte Bronte's Shirley with the Luddites
Teaching Political Texts
Teaching Anonymous and Collective Texts
Organizing the Field
Options for a Laboring-Class Canon
Teaching the Stephen Duck Tradition
Teaching the John Clare Tradition
Problems and Promises in the Creation of Laboring-Class Traditions
Teaching Laboring-Class Writers as Augustan
Teaching Laboring-Class Writers as Romantic
Teaching Laboring-Class Writers as Victorian
Teaching Laboring-Class Literary Communities
Teaching Contexts and Course Designs
The Role of Laboring-Class Literature in the English Literature Major
Incorporating Laboring-Class Writers into Canon-Based Courses
Laboring-Class Literature as a Stand-Alone Course
A Course on Laboring-Class Women Writers
Teaching Laboring-Class Literature to Working-Class Students
Teaching History with Laboring-Class Writers
Teaching Economics with Laboring-Class Writers
Teaching Agriculture with Laboring-Class Writers
Options for Teaching Individual Writers (examples might include but are not limited to the following)
Stephen Duck
Mary Collier
Mary Leapor
Ann Yearsley
Robert Burns
James Woodhouse
Thomas Spence
Elizabeth Hands
Susanna Pearson
William Blake
Robert Bloomfield
John Clare
William Cobbett
Henry ("Mechanic") Brown
Robert Millhouse
Ebeneezer Elliott
Mary Smith
Joseph Ramsbottom
Janet Hamilton
Ellen Johnston
Contributors
The editors will solicit contributions through direct contact with
scholars and instructors working in the field, through MLA division
lists, through period conferences, through specialist conferences in a
variety of disciplines, and through scholarly societies devoted to the
study of laboring-class writers. The editors will also solicit
contributions from other disciplines, such as history, economics,
agriculture, and sociology.