The Sociology of Social: Thinking, Theories, Practices, Eras, & Genres
"Work" Poems: Assessing the Georgic Mode of Eighteenth-Century Working-Class Poetry.
In Experiments in Genre in Eighteenth-Century Literature, edited by Sandro Jung (Ghent, Belgium: Academia Scientific, 2011), 105-133.
Eighteenth-century Britain saw the emergence of a new poetic genre, the “work” poem which took various forms of labor... more Eighteenth-century Britain saw the emergence of a new poetic genre, the “work” poem which took various forms of labor as its subject and was often written by laborers themselves. Several of these working class poets found their lives transformed due to the success of their verse (Stephen Duck most famously), but most faded into literary obscurity. However, a substantial body of “work” poems was produced by a diverse group of poets throughout the century, each manifesting divergent concerns and attitudes about the experience of work. This chapter assesses the formal connections uniting this poetic genre, particularly the frequent use of such literary devices as ironic distancing, litotes, and mock-georgic description. Instead of solely classifying “work” poems on the basis of their subject matter, this chapter demonstrates that such poetry (indeed the genre itself) lends itself to sophisticated literary techniques often associated with other poetic genres. In this fashion the full measure of eighteenth-century working class poetry can be evaluated more fairly, particularly by analyzing the formation of a new genre designed expressly by the poets themselves. The chapter ultimately seeks to demonstrate the connectedness, rather than the alienation, of working class poetry to the eighteenth-century British poetic tradition.
The Subject and the City: The Case of the Vanishing Private Eye in Paul Auster’s City of Glass.
Henry Street 6.1 (1997): 61-72.
This article explores the influence of postmodern theories of cognitive mapping in urban space in Paul Auster's City... more This article explores the influence of postmodern theories of cognitive mapping in urban space in Paul Auster's City of Glass. It provides an analysis of the figure of the flaneur in the novella, examining its relation to the literary and theoretical representations of urban walkers in the works of Baudelaire and Michel de Certeau.

