The Poetry of Chartism: Aesthetics, Politics, History

by Mike Sanders

Overview

Between 1838 and 1852, the leading Chartist newspaper, the Northern Star, published over 1000 poems written by more than 350 poets - as the readership of the Northern Star numbered hundreds of thousands, these poems were amongst the most widely read of the Victorian era. This book offers a complete record of all the poems published. It asks a simple question: why did the writing and reading of poetry play such an important role in Chartism's struggle to secure fundamental democratic rights? It answers this question by analysing the interplay between politics, aesthetics and history in the aftermath of the Newport insurrection (1839), during the mass strikes of 1842 and the year of European revolutions (1848). Additionally, the book theorizes poetry's political agency and examines the critical history of Chartist poetry.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781107403932
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	01/12/2012
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture , #62
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	314
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.71(d)

About the Author

Mike Sanders is a Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Theory at the University of Manchester.

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. The Chartist imaginary: 'talking by turns of politics and poetry'; 2. Chartist poetry and literary history; 3. 'A jackass load of poetry': The Northern Star's poetry column 1838–52; 4. Insurrectionary sonnets: the ideological afterlife of the Newport uprising; 5. 'Merry England': memory and nostalgia in the year of the mass strike; 6. 'The future-hastening storm': Chartist poetry in 1848; 7. Constellating Chartist poetry: Gerald Massey, Walter Benjamin and the uses of messianism; Appendix A: three Chartist poems; Appendix B: details of poetry published in the poetry column of the Northern Star.

Editorial Reviews

"Able, informed, and well-researched, this book uses considerable archives of Chartist journal poetry to advance and deepen our understanding of the role that poetry had to play in this innovative working-class movement. It will greatly interest all students of Chartism on account of the range of lesser known poets it examines, and should also enlighten anyone who wants to learn what formal and ideological features this poetry shares with the canonized poets of the day."
-John Plotz, nbol-19.org

From the Publisher