Poverty In Contemporary Literature

Poverty and inequality have gained a new public presence in the United Kingdom. Literature, and particularly narrative literature, (re-)configures how people think, feel and behave in relation to poverty. This makes the analysis of poverty-themed fiction an important aspect in the new transdisciplinary field of poverty studies.

Literature and Poverty offers an engaging overview of changes in literary perceptions of poverty and the poor. Part I of the book, from the Hebrew Bible to the French Revolution, provides essential background information. It introduces the Scriptural ideal of the ‘holy poor’ and the process by which biblical love of the poor came to be contested and undermined in European legislation and public opinion as capitalism grew and the state took over from the Church; Part II, from the French Revolution to World War II, shows how post-1789 problems of industrialization, population growth, war, and urbanization came to dominate much European literature, as poverty and the poor became central concerns of major writers such as Dickens, Dostoyevsky, and Hugo. David Aberbach uses literature – from the Bible, through Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Zola, Pushkin, and Orwell – to show how poverty changed from being an endemic and unavoidable fact of life, to a challenge for equality that might be attainable through a moral and rational society. As a literary and social history of poverty, this book argues for the vital importance of literature and the arts in understanding current problems in International Development.

Social anxiety about poverty surfaces with startling frequency in American literature. Yet, as Gavin Jones argues, poverty has been denied its due as a critical and ideological framework in its own right, despite recent interest in representations of the lower classes and the marginalized. These insights lay the groundwork for American Hungers, in which Jones uncovers a complex and controversial discourse on the poor that stretches from the antebellum era through the Depression. Reading writers such as Herman Melville, Theodore Dreiser, Edith Wharton, James Agee, and Richard Wright in their historical contexts, Jones explores why they succeeded where literary critics have fallen short. These authors acknowledged a poverty that was as aesthetically and culturally significant as it was socially and materially real. They confronted the ideological dilemmas of approaching poverty while giving language to the marginalized poor--the beggars, tramps, sharecroppers, and factory workers who form a persistent segment of American society. Far from peripheral, poverty emerges at the center of national debates about social justice, citizenship, and minority identity. And literature becomes a crucial tool to understand an economic and cultural condition that is at once urgent and elusive because it cuts across the categories of race, gender, and class by which we conventionally understand social difference. Combining social theory with literary analysis, American Hungers masterfully brings poverty into the mainstream critical idiom.

With their stirring depictions of a proud people striving for fulfillment in a land of natural beauty and economic hardship, West Virginia authors have produced a body of work that is worthy of study and of celebration. In Writing West Virginia, Boyd Creasman examines the fiction and poetry of eight accomplished writers--Davis Grubb, Mary Lee Settle, Breece D'J Pancake, Denise Giardina, Irene McKinney, Ann Pancake, Jayne Anne Phillips, and Pinckney Benedict--who exemplify the rich but often overlooked literary heritage of the Mountain State. Creasman identifies the varied ways in which these writers have grappled with the dynamics of place, socioeconomic class, and gender. For Settle, this expression has taken the form of historical novels chronicling the development of the state from its British settlement to the rise of the coal industry and the creation of a wealthy, industrial class. For other authors, the struggle against poverty and lack of opportunity has been a central concern. From the male protagonists of Grubb and Breece Pancake, searching for ways to assert their masculinity when they cannot find gainful employment, to the strong, independent women of McKinney, Giardina, and Ann Pancake, the characters in West Virginia literature have fought to transcend the challenges and limitations of living in the most Appalachian of states. In the recent fiction of Phillips and Benedict, elements of magical realism and fantasy are employed to create the possibility of transcendence for their characters, shifting the focus from landscape to dreamscape and thereby suggesting exciting new directions for Appalachian literature. Despite the remarkable talent of these writers, only a handful of book-length critical studies have focused on them, and none have considered them as a group. Writing West Virginia helps fill this gap in literary scholarship while opening up new paths for further exploration.

"In wealthy nations such as Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, issues of poverty and homelessness have often been displaced or sidelined by the accelerating number of studies on income inequality and wealth disparity. In Poverty and Austerity amid Prosperity, Gregg M. Olsen refocuses our attention on rising levels of poverty and homelessness, suggesting what we can do to address these issues. Highlighting the important differences between Canada, the UK, and the US, this volume explores the broad and narrow ways that poverty and homelessness have been conceptualized, and how this has shaped the way they are defined, measured, and addressed in each country. After a careful examination of poverty in these three countries, the volume draws comparisons with European nations that have been more successful in keeping issues relating to poverty under control. Olsen presents and critically contrasts the two main theoretical traditions, individual versus society, that have emerged to explain poverty and homelessness. Olsen argues that societal approaches to the study of poverty are better equipped to explain the developments unfolding across these nations, and that the eradication of poverty will only happen when the socio-economic system has been seriously overhauled and founded upon economic democracy."--

Poverty is an educational issue because it affects children's physical, emotional, and cognitive development. Especially in current times, taken-for-granted ideas about poverty and poor children must be scrutinized and reconsidered. That is the goal of this book. Poverty and Schooling in the U.S.: Contexts and Consequences is in part a plea for educators and future educators to undertake the intellectual and emotional work of learning more about the social causes, as well as the sometimes life-altering consequences of poverty. Although such efforts will not eradicate poverty, they can help form more insightful educators, administrators, policymakers, and researchers. The book is also an effort to bring to the table a larger conversation about the educational significance of the social and legal policy contexts of poverty and about typical school experiences of poor children. Poverty and Schooling in the U.S.: Contexts and Consequences: *describes what teachers need to know or to understand about the contexts and consequences of poverty; *provides information and analysis of the social context of poverty; *examines the experience of many children and families living in poverty; *documents the demographics of poverty and offers a critique of the official U.S. poverty metric; *reports on continuing and significant disparities in school funding; *presents historical context through a broad-brush review of some of the landmark legal decisions in the struggle for educational opportunity; *looks at some typical school experiences of poor children; *considers the consequences of the federal No Child Left Behind Act; and *offers suggestions about the kind of educational reform that could make a difference in the lives of poor children. This book is fundamental for faculty, researchers, school practitioners, and students across the field of education. It is accessible to all readers. An extensive background in social theory, educational theory, or statistics is not required.

This book analyzes the discourse generated by pundits, politicians, and artists to examine how poverty and the income gap is framed through specific modes of representation. Set against the dichotomy of the structural narrative of poverty and the opportunity narrative, Lemke's modified concept of precarity reveals new insights into the American situation as well as into the textuality of contemporary demands for equity. Her acute study of a vast range of artistic and journalistic texts brings attention to a mode of representation that is itself precarious, both in the modern and etymological sense, denoting both insecurity and entreaty. With the keen eye of a cultural studies scholar her innovative book makes a necessary contribution to academic and popular critiques of the social effects of neoliberal capitalism.

This highly original book takes as its starting point a central question for nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and philosophy: how to represent the poor? Covering the period from the publication of Les Fleurs du Mal in 1857 to the composition of Benjamin's final texts in the 1930s, Untimely Beggar investigates the coincidence of two modern literary and philosophical interests: representing the poor and representing potential. To take account of literature's relation to the poor, Patrick Greaney proposes the concept of impoverished writing, which withdraws from representing objects and registers the existence of power. By reducing itself to the indication of its own potential, by impoverishing itself, literary language attempts to engage and participate in the power of the poor. This focus on impoverished language offers new perspectives on major French and German authors, including Marx, Nietzsche, Mallarmé, Rilke, and Brecht; and makes significant contributions to recent debates about power and potential in thinkers such as Agamben, Deleuze, Foucault, Hardt, and Negri. In doing so, Greaney offers significant insights into modernity's intense philosophical and literary interest in socioeconomic poverty. Patrick Greaney is assistant professor of German studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder.