Literary form and social reform: The politics of Chartist literature

Whether they accepted or rejected middle-class standards of merit, many Chartist writers regarded stylistic accomplishment as a powerful validation of their class's claims. If working people could negotiate the challenges of meter or write epics that placed Chartist aspirations at the fore of a nation's destiny, they demonstrated an intellectual sophistication which entitled them to equal participation in self-government---Chartism's primary goal. The literariness of their writing represented a cultural assertion of political ability.; This study applies close formal scrutiny to Chartist short stories, novels, and poetry, making it the first full-length account in some years to examine Chartist literature cross-generically. With a sustained, specific focus on Chartism's imbrication of politics and aesthetic forms, it seeks to vindicate the place of working-class literature in Victorian studies and to contribute to a more nuanced picture of what Victorian literature is.; Chapter one, "Framing the Gender Debate: Literary Enclosure and Readerly Agency in Gerald Massey's 'Only a Dream,"' demonstrates how Massey's 1856 poem fuses the devices of the frame tale and the dream vision to create a poetic narrative defending women's rights to sexual freedom and marital choice. The second chapter, "Thomas Cooper's Purgatory of Suicides as a Critique of the Politics of Religion," details the poet's use in 1845 of the Spenserian stanza as the medium for his epic denunciation of the religious suppression of workers's freedom. Thomas Wheeler's novel Sunshine and Shadow (1849-50) grounds chapter three, "Chartist Fiction and the Strategies of Revolution," which simultaneously examines the novel's radical innovations in revolutionary theory and the narrative and characterological revisions those innovations required. Finally, "Ernest Jones and the Poetics of Internationalism" traces the importance of cross-border solidarity throughout Jones's writing (184655)---including poems, speeches, and a novel---by examining the function of literary forms and poetic sensibilities in fostering internationalism.