"The Thresher's Labour" is one of three poems written by Stephen Duck in 1730. It describes Duck's struggles as an agricultural labourer, and the situation of the early eighteenth-century British working class in general. H. Gustav Klaus said it was the most accurate description of working life in verse, and praised Duck's recognition that work deserved a literary treatment. [1] "The Thresher's Labour" became the voice, in a sense, for the rural labourers who were oppressed. It also became a model for other labouring-class artists, who began to write about their own lives and daily experiences. It was the start of a new genre of literature developed by working-class people.
Duck wrote "The Thresher's Labour" after a friend, Reverend Stanley, [2] suggested that Duck write about his life. A pirated edition of the text was published in Poems on Several Subjects in 1730, and a revised and authorised version in Poems on Several Occasions in 1736. [3]
"The Thresher's Labour" gives details about the hard, tedious labour of an agricultural worker of the 18th century:
Soon as the golden Harvest quits the Plain,
And Ceres' Gifts reward the Farmer's Pain;
What Corn each Sheaf will yield, intent to hear,
And guess from thence the Profits of the Year,
He calls his Reapers forth: Around we stand,
With deep Attention, waiting his Command.
To each our Task he readily divides,
And pointing, to our diff'rent Stations guides.
As he directs, to distant Barns we go;
Here two for Wheat, and there for Barley two.
But first, to shew what he expects to find,
These Words, or Words like these, disclose his Mind:
" So dry the Corn was carry'd from the Field,
" So easily 'twill thresh, so well 'twill yield;
" Sure large Day's-Works I well may hope for now:
" Come, strip, and try; let's see what you can do." [4]— Lines 13-28
His characterisation of the agricultural cycle as a destructive machine controlled by "The Master" has been contrasted with the traditional depictions of pastoral scenes. [5]
In "The Thresher's Labour," Stephen Duck could be seen to imply that women did not contribute much during the harvests, the hardest time of the year. Duck portrays the workers as strong men, covered in dust from their work, while mentioning that the women are at home taking care of the children.
The Sweat, the Dust, and suffocating Smoke,
Make us so much like Ethiopians look,
We scare our Wives, when Ev'ning brings us home;
And frighted Infants think the Bugbear come.
Week after Week, we this dull Task pursue,
Unless when winn'wing Days produce a new;
A new, indeed, but frequently a worse! [4]— Lines 64-70
These statements provoked some readers, in particular Mary Collier, a washerwoman who knew that women often worked alongside the men. Collier wrote a poem called "The Woman's Labour" as a direct response to Duck's "The Thresher's Labour." "The Woman's Labour" corrects and criticizes Duck's statements about women's contributions, at times point by point. [6]
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Jethro Tull was an English agriculturist from Berkshire who helped to bring about the British Agricultural Revolution of the 18th century. He perfected a horse-drawn seed drill in 1701 that economically sowed the seeds in neat rows, and later developed a horse-drawn hoe. Tull's methods were adopted by many landowners and helped to provide the basis for modern agriculture.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1730.
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Mary Leapor (1722–1746) was an English poet, born in Marston St. Lawrence, Northamptonshire, the only child of Anne Sharman and Philip Leapor (1693–1771), a gardener. She, out of the many labouring-class writers of the period, was noticeably well received.
Capital. A Critique of Political Economy. Volume I: The Process of Production of Capital is the first of three treatises that make up Das Kapital, a critique of political economy by the German philosopher and economist Karl Marx. First published on 14 September 1867, Volume I was the product of a decade of research and redrafting and is the only part of Das Kapital to be completed during Marx's life. It focuses on the aspect of capitalism that Marx refers to as the capitalist mode of production or how capitalism organises society to produce goods and services.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
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This last distinction is quite often visible in the basic categorical differences between anthologies on the one hand, and all other types of collections on the other, for it is in the one that we read poems of excellence, the "best of English poetry," and it is in the other that we read poems of interest. Out of the differences between a principle of selection and a principle of collection, then, comes a difference in aesthetic value, which is precisely what is at issue in the debates over the "proper" material for inclusion into the canon.
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