Proletarian literature

Here's a link to the proletarian literature texts we'll be looking at for Tuesday, September 30. (Sorry for the delay - - technical glitches in getting the stuff online.) The short stories and Wright poem are from Proletarian Literature in the United States, an anthology of stuff from the proletarian literature movement. You can also check out an online version of Joseph Freeman's introduction to the anthology. If you have any trouble accessing the material, do let me know.

Essay #1 Topic

I started out the class by riffing on the various possible relations between literature and labor within the title of our class, "The Literature of Labor." (A riff inspired by James T. Farrell's similar take on the possible meanings of proletarian literature in his A Note on Literary Criticism (1936), pps. 78-79.) The question of how literature and labor are related has also, it seems to me, been a central question in both the major works we've read so far - - Davis's Life in the Iron Mills and London's Martin Eden.

To write this essay:

1) Select either Davis's or London's novel;

2) Think about the following question: To what extent does this work propose a conflict between literature and labor?

(Some other questions that may help to sharpen your thinking: How does this work depict the "class" nature of literature as an institution? What particular conflicts does a working-class desire to write "literature" lead to? What contradictions does a working-class writer of "literature" confront? How does a working-class artist judge his or her success? His or her failure? According to your text, can there ever be such a thing as working-class "literature"? According to your text, can a working-class writer or artist exist? If so, how? If not, why not?)

Your essay should be three pages or less. It should be double-spaced in font no larger than 12 point and no smaller than 11 point. Use examples and quotations to support your argument or interpretation. Proofread your essay - -I'll stop reading the text after the second error (punctuation, typographic, grammatical, or spelling). No emailed essays; the essay must be submitted in hard copy at the beginning of the class on which it's due.

If you have questions, or just want to discuss your ideas, come in and talk with me.

Due date: Thursday, September 30, 2008.

The Word Market

Like his creator, Jack London, Martin Eden's eventual success as a writer depended on the rise of the mass circulation magazine. Industrialized production methods, coupled with new, cheaper forms of distribution revolutionized the mass media in the late 19th century. This medium created new readers, new writers, new genres, and new paths to professional authorship. Some of the pioneering magazines to appear in the late 19th century include Munsey's Magazine, Frank Leslie's Weekly, and McClure's. A pretty good history of this development can be found here.

Mass circulation magazines were the forerunners of today's mass media culture. What other features of this nascent mass media culture do we see in Martin Eden? Pace London's novel, does newly industrialized cultural production create a new "scribbling" proletariat? how does it "industrialize" - - or contribute to the "industrialization" of - - American culture in general?

Jack London

HOW I BECAME A SOCIALIST (1905)

It is quite fair to say that I became a Socialist in a fashion somewhat similar to the way in which the Teutonic pagans became Christians -- it was hammered into me. Not only was I not looking for Socialism at the time of my conversion, but I was fighting it . I was very young and callow, did not know much of anything, and though I had never even heard of a school called " Individualism," I sang the paean of the strong with all my heart.

This was because I was strong myself. By strong I mean that I had good health and hard muscles, both of which possessions are easily accounted for. I had lived my childhood on California ranches, my boyhood hustling newspapers on the streets of a healthy Western city, and my youth on the ozone-laden waters of San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. I loved life in the open, and I toiled in the open, at the hardest kinds of work. Learning no trade, but drifting along from job to job, I looked on the world and called it good, every bit of it. Let me repeat, this optimism was because I was healthy and strong, bothered with neither aches nor weaknesses, never turned down by the boss because I did not look fit, able always to get a job at shovelling coal, sailorizing, or manual labor of some sort.

More . . . .

Korl Woman as sculpture

Some works by Hiram Powers (1805 - 1873), 19th century America's preeminent sculptor:



"The Greek Slave" (1843)



"Horatio Greenough" (1854 - 1859)



"Greek Slave" (1845)