Plain Folk: Literature and the Problem of Poverty

Spring 2010 ENGL 1710K S01

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Instructor: Rolland D. Murray

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Information on meeting times for this course can be found on Course Schedule at http://selfservice.brown.edu

Course Description

Explores poverty as a political and aesthetic problem for the American novelist. Examines the ways that writers have imagined the poor as dangerous others, agents of urban decay, bearers of folk culture, and engines of class revolt. Also considers these literary texts in relation to historical debates about economic inequality. Writers may include Crane, Faulkner, Wright, Steinbeck, and Hurston.