Dr. Castellano 3 credits

This course examines two poets who are defined by their working-class status:  William Blake “the Engraver” and John Clare ”the Peasant Poet.”  For both men, writing poetry becomes an intellectual and creative struggle for autonomy against the homogenizing effects of the agricultural and industrial revolutions.  We will read these poets in light of differing philosophical views of the human relationship to labor from Smith’s homo economicus to Arendt’s homo faber.  In addition, we will investigate concepts of labor—labor as the appropriation or domination of nature (Locke and Freud), as objectification and alienation (Marx), and as self-engendering or self-overcoming (Hegel and Nietzsche) —in order to create theoretically informed readings of these laboring poets. 

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