Includes bibliographical references (pages 208-226) and index.
Introduction; A brief history of 'class'; Marx and class; Class and status; Class and exchange; Exchange and 'literature'; Medieval; Class and the peasants; The 'individual'; 'Sir Gareth of Orkney' and social mobility; Piers the Ploughman; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: identity and exchange; Conclusion; The Renaissance; The intelligentsia and class; Renaissance England; The nobility and the gentry; The bourgeoisie; Masterless men; Class or status?; Money, exchange and self; Conclusion; The Civil War and after.
Class society versus status societyThe body and the bourgeoisie; Classification and capitalist economics; The plain style and the bourgeoisie; Money, self and class; Paradise Lost (1667): bedding down the bourgeois economy; The eighteenth century; The meanings of 'class' and the rise of the middle class; The free market and representation; Reason, the plain style and class; The 'individual', the 'subject' and money; The novel and class.
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Gary Day traces the phenomenon of class from the medieval to the postmodern period, examining its relevance to literary and cultural analysis today.