Revisiting German Proletarian-Revolutionary Literature

This article provides an overview of the emergence of proletarian literature in Germany, and the focuses in on the key texts, figures and debates of the Communist Party-affiliated Federation of Revolutionary-Proletarian Writers (BPRS) and the important debates about literature and politics in its journal Die Linkskurve between 1929 and 1932. At the same time, I argue for a complicated and sometimes conflictual relationship between the increasingly Hegelian aesthetic position of the journal and the more operatively-oriented work of BPRS authors.

The Proletarian Literature Movement: Japan’s First Encounter with Working-Class Literature

This essay explores Japanese working-class literature as it developed within the wider context of the so-called Proletarian Cultural Movement that was in operation for about ten years, peaking in the late 1920s. While tracing the origins of the initiative to create a “proletarian” literature in Japan to Marxist study circles at universities, it discusses the movement’s quest to foster “true” worker writers based on the factory floor. Next, the chapter highlights literary works by female writers who were encouraged at the time by international communism’s focus on the Japanese women issue due to their high inclusion in the industrial work force. Finally, the chapter discusses the legacy and continuing relevance of Kobayashi Takiji’s The Crab Cannery Ship, the flagship of working-class literature in Japan. Throughout, the essay endeavors to paint a vivid picture of writer activists within the movement.

Tales of Social Terror: Notes on Argentine Working-Class Literature

This essay takes up the problem of discussing working-class literature in a context marked by the absence of the term within Argentine literary studies. The discussion focuses on Argentine proletarian writer Elías Castelnuovo and his role in shaping how critics approach Argentine proletarian and working-class literature. The following discussion argues for the need to distance new approaches to Argentine working-class literature from the critical account molded throughout the 20th century. Without such distancing, it is difficult – if not impossible – to find proletarian and working-class literature worthy of discussion within Argentine letters. Although the essay looks closely at the case of Argentine national literature, the aim is to contribute to mapping working-class literature across the region and beyond.

Towards the Light, into the Silence: Danish Working-Class Literature Past and, Perhaps, Present

The chapter presents an overview of Danish working-class literary history. The initial sections outline the established narrative of the tradition from the late 19th century to the early 1980s, whereas the closing parts poses the question: Does a contemporary Danish working-class literature exist? The backdrop of this question is the decline of scholarly interest in working-class literature since the 1980’s which has left the tradition’s trajectory over the last four decades generally unexplored. The chapter argues that contemporary Danish literature contains a multifaceted list of works for a 21st century working-class literature. However, even the limited number of recent studies addressing the possible connection between this body of works and the tradition present no univocal assessment of the current state of Danish working-class literature. The varied interpretations, the chapter argues, are a result of an inherent challenge in the research field: that of defining working-class literature. Thus, the exploration of the history of Danish working-class literature – focusing on the construction of the tradition – exposes it as a contested field and highlights the different conceptualizations of the term.

“A Pole of Differentiation”: Pasts and Futures in Irish Working-Class Writing

The chapter outlines the current state of play in the scholarly study of Irish working-class writing. It explores issues with regard to the historiography of the Irish working class, analyses its diasporic and colonial contexts, and provides a brief introduction to Irish working-class writing over the past three centuries and its study in the academy. The chapter also suggests some of the prominent themes across this literature, which suggest points of commonality (as well as contrast) with working-class writing in other international contexts.

The Hybridity of South African Working-Class Literature

In this chapter I present an overview of the most prominent trends in South African working-class literature from the beginning of the 20th century until 1994. Since its emergence, South African working class was a heterogeneous formation which encompassed diverse ethnicities, both of European and non-European origin. Each of them created its own literature and culture, using various languages, incorporating traditional elements and means of expression, and merging them with borrowed foreign discourses and literary devices belonging to the repertoire of socialist literature that had been created mostly in the Soviet Union, the USA and other European countries. Consequently, South African working-class literature can be conceived of as conglomerate of heteroglot hybrid forms and manifestations of a subversive counter-discourse of protest literature. The forms presented here include writings of European socialists commenting on South African situation, novels utilizing the Jim goes to Joburg plot pattern, drama incorporating the Soviet socialist realism and references to the Afrikaans farm novel, Afrikaans folk tunes functioning as protest songs, and black workers praise poetry based on tribal oral conventions. As a carrier of a new working-class identity, this literature promoted a modern urban model which, nevertheless, relied on the continuity with local rural traditions.

From Red Scare to Capitalist Showcase: Working-Class Literature from Singapore

In Singapore, discourse on working-class culture, especially working-class literature, is mostly scant. This paper aims to begin constructing such a discourse by analysing from a historical perspective three working-class writers. By discussing Chong Han (1945- ), Tan Kok Seng (1939- ) and Md Sharif Uddin (1978- ) and their works, I reflect on the particular historical, social-political and aesthetic features that make each writer unique and relevant at different stages in Singaporean history. I will delineate a rudimentary historical overview of working-class literature in Singapore, stressing the different possibilities and limits under various "production modes". By doing so, I hope to show the distinctive predicaments of working-class literature and various issues in today's scholarship on working-class literature.