TABLE OF CONTENTS: List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi
Preface xiii
INTRODUCTION: The Problem of Poverty in Literary Criticism 1
CHAPTER ONE: Beggaring Description: Herman Melville and Antebellum Poverty Discourse 21
Paradigms of Poverty and Pauperism 23
Literary Uses and Abuses of Poverty 28
The Ambivalence of Thoreau and Davis 32
Redburn and Israel Potter: Transatlantic Counterparts 38
Melville's Sketches of the Mid-1850s 46
Poor Pierre 52
Problems of Need in The Confidence-Man 59
CHAPTER TWO: Being Poor in the Progressive Era: Dreiser and Wharton on the Pauper Problem 62
Writing Poverty 65
The Persistence of Pauperism 72
What's the Matter with Hurstwood? 76
The Class That Drifts 80
Fear of Falling 85
The Feminization of Poverty 88
Poor Lily 92
Class and Gender 100
CHAPTER THREE: The Depression in Black and White: Agee, Wright, and the Aesthetics of Damage 106
Understanding the Depression 110
Agee's Uncertainty 116
Damage and Disadvantage 120
The Beauty and Erotics of Poverty 124
Race, Class, and Poor Richard 129
American Hunger 139
Delinquent Identity 144
CONCLUSION 148
Notes 155
Works Cited 201
Index 219
Return to Book Description File created: 4/23/2008 | 
