Nigel Pearce

The Origins of Proletarian Poetics Nigel Pearce

Dare to write, dare to win. A study of working-class poetry and poetics.

'Do you love poetry? But like many people do you think only people like William Wordsworth, Elizabeth Barrett-Browning, Lord Tennyson and those from similar social backgrounds were writing verse in the 19th century, the birth of capitalism?

This study seeks to illustrate that working-class poets and their supporters also wrote poetry in the same epoch, a 'hidden history.' Yet this study goes beyond merely illuminating a tradition of working-class poets. It argues for a 'proletarian poetic' and that the future of aesthetics resides within this working-class poetic.'