| Popis: |
The concluding chapter explores how the narratives that developed around Stephen Duck’s life and works impacted upon subsequent labouring-class writers. As the eighteenth century progressed and increasing numbers of labouring-class men and women sought to publish their own verse and develop their own literary careers, Duck’s example was invoked again and again, by the poets themselves, their patrons, their reviewers, and their readers. Although the comparison was seldom intended as a compliment, these repeated references back to Duck cemented his position at the head of a developing tradition of labouring-class poetry. As Duck had throughout his life, so too after his death did he provide both opportunity and provocation for thinking through the contested and complex relationships that existed between class, patronage, and poetry in Hanoverian England. |
