The anthology Proletarian Literature in the United States published in 1935 by International Publishers, the publishing company of the Communist Party U.S.A., was and remains the leading collection of "proletarian literature." What "proletarian literature" is and why it has come to be is the subject of Freeman's essay.
Michael Gold's essay "Go Left, Young Writers!" was published in The New Masses in January 1929, before the advent of the Great Depression and the great period of growth of the working-class movement, the trade union movement, and the influence of proletarian literature and the Communist Party in literature and culture. It's very different from Freeman's more historically and theoretically framed essay. Freeman mentions Gold favorably.
Study these two essays. They appear to address different readers. Think about how their implied readers differ.
Study Freeman's longer essay with special care. What does Freeman think are the main theoretical, critical objections to proletarian literature? What does he think are its main problems?
Note the large number of references to literary history. I have put a list (probably not complete) at the bottom of his homework assignment. If you are curious, look up some information about some of them. Why do you think he cites so many of them? What does this say about his critical theory? his implied readers?
Writing Assignment: What does Freeman think are the main objections to proletarian literature and proletarian writers? What does he think are the main tasks for proletarian writers?
Briefly (25-40 words) compare and contrast Freeman's views to those of Michael Gold in his short essay.
Length: 350 words. Email to your group and to me.
Partial list of literary references in Joseph Freeman's essay
| Max Eastman (who wrote the poem
containing the phrase "thirsting breasts") "Roar China" and Sergei Tretiakov Vladimir Mayakovsky Josephine Herbst Robert Cantwell Marcel Proust Jack Conroy Alexander Voronsky I.A. Richards William Wordsworth Samuel Taylor Coleridge Robert Southey Johann Wolfgang von Goethe T.S. Eliot |
Sinclair Lewis Eugene O'Neill Piotr Ilich Tschaikowsky Ludwig van Beethoven (the Appassionata piano concerto) Aeschylus Alexandre Dumas fils (author of Lady of the Camelias - which was the model for Giuseppe Verdi's opera La Traviata) The Goncourt Brothers (authors of Germinie Lacerteux, the novel referred to by Freeman on p. 18) Michael Gold New Heloise, a novel by Jean-Jacques Rousseau And Quiet Flows the Don, a novel by Soviet novelist Mikhail Sholokhov Upton Sinclair The American poets referred to on page 19: Harriet Monroe, Carl Sandburg, Ezra Pound, Sinclair Lewis (again), Sherwood Anderson, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway |
Edwin Seaver Madame de Stael Prosper de Barante Ferdinand Freiligrath Georg Herwegh Georg Brandes The Socialist Party writers around The Comrade: John Spargo, George D. herron, Edward Carpenter, Walter Crane, Richard Le Gallienne, Maxim Gorki, Jack London, Upton Sinclear (again), Ernest Crosby, Edwin Markham ... and around The Masses (page 24) - Floyd Dell; John Reed, Joe Hhill, Ralph Chaplin, Arturo Giovannitti ... and around the journal from which all these writings in PLUS are drawn, The New Masses Plus the John Reed Clubs and the American Writers' Congress |