Marxist Theory

Question 1

‘The Garden’ (1917) Ezra Pound - ‘the filthy, sturdy, unkillable…, “emotional…”

Answer 1

infants of the very poor”. “…anaemia” unruly and delirious movement of the poem mirrors common depictions of the poor in Victorian England - the poor at the prey of social protocols which oppress them, unsettling imagery

Question 2

what does consumerism and capital create?

Answer 2

the dehumanising of social relations

Question 3

‘To Penshurst’(1616) by Ben Johnson - “There’s none that dwell about them wish them

Answer 3

down; But all come in, the farmer and the clown, And no one empty-handed, to salute/Thy lord and lady, though they have no suit.” praises the country house but quietly shows envy and resentment of the privilege and extravagance

Question 4

“the class that…

Answer 4

broke him for the pence that splash like brackish tears” - talks of betrayal, ventriloquising their provincialism - Tony Harrison voices the difficulty for working class voices to be heard through poetry - ‘Turns’

Question 5

Dickens, Bronte, Gaskell, Lawrence, Orwell all criticise

Answer 5

the class system

Question 6

More recent writers include

Answer 6

Caitlin Moran ,Irvine Welsh Jeanette Winterson

Question 7

Dawson - “Whatever their sympathies with the poor and oppressed, the poets were…

Answer 7

…for the most part upper- and middle-class intellectuals who could only fear what the oppressed might do to right their wrongs.”

Question 8

Dawson - “Insofar as they espoused the values of liberty and equality the Romantics could be seen as…

Answer 8

ideologues for the bourgeois revolution, helping to obscure the class nature of middle-class political demands”

Question 9

Shelley in ‘a defence of poetry’ - ‘poets are the

Answer 9

unacknowledged legislators of the world’

Question 10

‘Mask of Anarchy’ 1819 -‘Castlereagh’

Answer 10

• shaming real politicians by turning them into an allegory

Question 11

‘Mask of Anarchy’ 1819 - “trampling to a…

Answer 11

mire of blood” is a viscerally realistic description which SHOCKS us

Question 12

what is personified in ‘Mask of Anarchy’ 1819?

Answer 12

‘Anarchy’ and ‘hope’

Question 13

‘Mask of Anarchy’ 1819 - the rousing ‘ye are many, they are few’ is addressing who?

Answer 13

‘men of england’

Question 14

According to Jameson, “the very content of class ideology is…

Answer 14

relational, in the sense that its “values” are always actively in situation with respect to the opposing class”

Question 15

Trotsky “Marxism alone can explain…

Answer 15

who it was who made a demand for such an artistic form and not another, and why” when looking at the literature of the past”

Question 16

Trotsky - “The proclamations which are written by well-known Marxists…

Answer 16

not infrequently speak of landlords, capitalists, priests, generals and other exploiters”

Question 17

Caliban - “This Island’s…

Answer 17

mine, by; Sycorax my mother / which thou takest from me” (I.II.337-338).

Question 18

Caliban - “You taught me…

Answer 18

language, and my profit on’t / Is I know how to curse. The red plague rid you / For learning me your language!” (I.ii.366–368).

Question 19

Caliban - “For I am all the…

Answer 19

subjects that you have Which first was mine own king. And here you sty me In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me The rest o’ th’ island.”

Question 20

Prospero calls Caliban his…

Answer 20

“slave”

Question 21

“Come forth, I say! There’s other..

Answer 21

business for thee. Come, thou tortoise!”

Question 22

Enron - money is the one (thing) that…

Answer 22

gets their hand off their dick and into work.” “business is nature”
obsession with money drives mankind, juxtaposition, shows skewed morality, but also Darwinian

Question 23

Enron - “railroads…

Answer 23

internet… slave trade”

flippant juxtaposition mocks capitalism and the ‘American Dream’, dark humour

Question 24

Enron - “captain of all industry” to

Answer 24

“fraud sitting in jail”

social fall, “messiah like” to being told “Screw this”, “asshole! I hope your dick falls off!” by a prostitute, juxtaposition, highlights the extent of his fall

Question 25

Marx - The bureaucrat has the world as

Answer 25

a mere object of his action.

Question 26

Marx - “Theory is capable of gripping…

Answer 26

the masses as soon as it demonstrates ad hominem, and it demonstrates ad hominem as soon as it becomes radical”

Question 27

Marx - “Political Economy regards the proletarian …

Answer 27

like a horse, he must receive enough to enable him to work. It does not consider him, during the time when he is not working, as a human being”

Question 28

Marx - “a human is an animal which can individuate itself…

Answer 28

only in the midst of society. Production by an isolated individual outside society … is as much of an absurdity as is the development of language without individuals living together and talking to each other”.

Question 29

Eagleton - “to understand ideologies is to understand…

Answer 29

both the past and present more deeply; and such understanding contributes to our liberation”

Question 30

Eagleton - “in the absence of genuinely revolutionary art, only a…

Answer 30

radical conservatism, hostile like Marxism to the withered values of liberal bourgeois society, could produce the most significant literature”