Class

This exciting new account traces the phenomenon of class from the medieval to the postmodern period, examining its relevance to literary and cultural analysis today. Drawing on historical, sociological and literary writings, Gary Day gives an account of class at different historical moments; shows the role of class in literary constructions of the social; examines the complex relations between "class" and "culture"; focuses attention on the role of class in constructions of "the literary" and "the canon"; employs a revived and revised notion of class to critique recent theoretical movements.

Series Editor's Preface

xi

Acknowledgements

xiii

Introduction

1

(1)

A brief history of `class'

2

(4)

Marx and class

6

(2)

Class and status

8

(4)

Class and exchange

12

(2)

Exchange and `literature'

14

(5)

Medieval

19

(18)

The estates model of society

19

(4)

Class and the peasants

23

(4)

The `individual'

27

(2)

`Sir Gareth of Orkney' and social mobility

29

(2)

Piers the Ploughman

31

(3)

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: identity and exchange

34

(2)

Conclusion

36

(1)

The Renaissance

37

(27)

Criticism and cultural production: warring significations

37

(4)

The intelligentsia and class

41

(3)

Renaissance England

44

(2)

The nobility and the gentry

46

(2)

The bourgeoisie

48

(2)

Masterless men

50

(2)

Class or status?

52

(4)

Money, exchange and self

56

(6)

Conclusion

62

(2)

The Civil War and after

64

(25)

The English Revolution: a class war?

64

(4)

Class society versus status society

68

(4)

The body and the bourgeoisie

72

(3)

Classification and capitalist economics

75

(2)

The plain style and the bourgeoisie

77

(4)

Money, self and class

81

(3)

Paradise Lost (1667): bedding down the bourgeois economy

84

(5)

The eighteenth century

89

(24)

Patricians, plebs and the persistence of hierarchy

89

(5)

The meanings of `class' and the rise of the middle class

94

(4)

The free market and representation

98

(2)

Reason, the plain style and class

100

(6)

The `individual', the `subject' and money

106

(2)

The novel and class

108

(4)

Conclusion

112

(1)

The nineteenth century

113

(41)

Class and hierarchy

113

(7)

Components of the English working class

120

(6)

The economic relations of class and class consciousness

126

(3)

Chartism

129

(6)

The `human' and class: North and South

135

(5)

The individual and class

140

(4)

Poverty and class in the late nineteenth century

144

(2)

New unionism and socialism

146

(3)

Culture and class

149

(5)

The twentieth century

154

(51)

The economy of modernism

154

(6)

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

160

(6)

The inter-war years: who speaks for the workers?

166

(8)

Love on the Dole

174

(4)

Post-war: affluence and class

178

(10)

The classless society?

188

(10)

Class and post-structuralism

198

(3)

Conclusion

201

(4)

Glossary

205

(3)

Bibliography

208

(19)

Index

227

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Summary

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials