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Scholarship Boy: The Poetry of Tony Harrison

“He both wants to go back and yet thinks he has gone beyond his class, feels himself weighted with knowledge of his own and their situation, which hereafter forbids him the simpler pleasures of his father and mother. And this is only one of his temptations to self-dramatization. . . .” read more

The American Connection: The Masculine Style in Popular Fiction

“In recent years the growth of oral history projects in many countries testifies to the importance now given to popular experience, memory and activity recoverable through personal interviews. Many of these projects have concentrated on experiences of working life, family life, women’s work and political activity, the struggle . . .” read more

Expressionism and Working-Class Fiction

“In his essay, ‘The Storyteller’, Walter Benjamin distinguishes between two generic traditions of story-telling, symbolized by two contrasting occupations: the peasant and the voyager. ‘If one wants to picture these two groups through their archaic representatives’, he wrote, ‘one is embodied in the resident tiller of the soil, . . .” read more