Landscape and Labour: Work, Place, and the Working Class in Eliot, Hardy, and Lawrence (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781786609106)

In the novels of George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and D.H. Lawrence a miniature history of the English working class can be found. Through their sympathetic portrayals, these authors transformed working-class culture from a patronizing pastiche into a vital reality. This achievement was crucial to the rise of the English working-class as the key agency of democratic reform from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. In our own times, by contrast, depictions of working-class culture are patronizing at best, if not openly denigrating. This crisis of representation has born recent fruit in the phenomenon of populism, a long-term consequence of the undermining of genuinely popular rule under neoliberal capitalism. Returning to the works of Eliot, Hardy, and Lawrence allows us to regain a sense of direction for contemporary politics, by rediscovering the vital force of working-class culture.

Author: Brian Elliott
ISBN-10: 178660910X
ISBN-13: 9781786609106
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Language: English
Published: 08/10/2021
Pages: 168
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.93lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.56d