This book offers an account of the emergence of a new conception of homelessness in the mid-nineteenth century, presented as a response to the evolution of capitalism and disciplinary society in this period. In the process it uncovers a neglected body of literature on the subject of the tramp written by thirty-three memoir writers and eighteen fiction writers, most of whom were themselves homeless. It also offers the first comprehensive overview in recent scholarship of representations of homelessness in British fiction in the modern period. In analysing these works, The Tramp in British Literature presents select texts as a unique and ignored contribution to a wider radical discourse defined by its opposition to a societal fixation upon the need to be productive. In addition to this, it also outlines an alternative approach to the study of identity-oriented discourse, in which the unrepresentativeness and political inefficacy of works in this mould is acknowledged alongside a sense of their capacity to precipitate radical awareness.weiterlesen