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1 results

  • Chapter 16 - Literature of Poverty and Labor

  • from Part III - Methods for Living
  • Edited by William Huntting Howell, Boston University, Greta LaFleur, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Book:
    American Literature in Transition, 1770–1828
    Published online:
    09 June 2022
    Print publication:
    23 June 2022, pp 288-308

  • Summary

    This chapter, on literatures of labor and poverty, centers on Philadelphia and considers narratives of a group often sidelined in critical discourse: the “free” laboring poor, especially the mobile poor, both black and white. Illuminating the rich, complex interrelationship between oral and literary culture in this period, these narratives reveal a fascination with the voice of the poor that was evident throughout early national culture. The chapter first takes up a variety of poverty narratives, from enforced narratives delivered at the Philadelphia Almshouse to written begging letters to published beggar narratives and other autobiographical texts; it then explores how oral testimonials of the poor shaped the dialogic form of the early American novel.