- Title
- Francis Adams and 'Songs of the Army of the Night': Negotiating difference, maintaining commitment
- Creator
- Tasker, Meg
- Date
- 2002
- Type
- Text; Journal article
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/32238
- Identifier
- vital:872
- Identifier
-
https://doi.org/10.1353/vp.2002.0007
- Identifier
- ISSN:0042-5206
- Abstract
- This essay examines the way in which, after establishing a broad literary and journalistic reputation in both England and Australia, Adams adopted a split writing position in Songs of the Army of the Night. Comprising mostly ballads in the style of Chartist protest poetry, the Songs are intertextually determined; to some extent they have a generic life of their own. Yet in adopting the form of popular verse, using vernacular forms and diction, Adams nonetheless constructs a persona that is consistent with much of his more "literary" writing. Songs of the Army of the Night does more than demonstrate conflict in Adams' work between the claims of "art" and "life," between his upper middle-class cultural affiliations and working-class political sympathies. Despite this element of conflict, the configuration of speaking positions is not dialectic, but dialogic in the Bakhtinian sense. (2) That is, the voices or speaking positions in the poetry do not work through opposition to achieve synthesis or progress, or to generate a new set of dialectical terms; rather, they co-exist in a synchronous multiplicity that allows the "implied poet" of the whole volume to be constructed as both a member of the oppressed masses and a middle-class sympathizer.; C1
- Publisher
- West Virginia University
- Relation
- Victorian Poetry Vol. 40, no. 1 (Spr 2002), p. 71-86
- Rights
- Copyright West Virginia University
- Rights
- Open Access
- Rights
- This metadata is freely available under a CCO license
- Subject
- 2005 Literary Studies; Poetry; Francis Adams
- Full Text
- Reviewed
- Hits: 736
- Visitors: 1020
- Downloads: 298
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | DS1 | Published Version | 149 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |