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- Title
Generosity and the Ghosts of Poor Laws Passed.
- Authors
Grogan, Michael
- Abstract
The most common narratives of a culture usually go unrecorded. The author mentions that the world has been left virtually nothing of direct, verbatim exchanges between the poor and property owners performed in England for almost two hundred and fifty years after Elizabeth He formalized poor law legislation in 1601. When the English poor needed state aid, they applied physically before local authorities at the parish pay-table, typically at monthly gatherings held at church after Sunday service. Animated by the spirit of modern capitalism, the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 folded up the parish pay-table by introducing policies designed to eliminate the need for public face-to-face give-and-take between representatives of the state and the indigent. Reformers sought to eliminate the "disgusting" lower-class narrative altogether, and with it the need for the state to sort truth from lies. Fictional narratives became a primary site for the putatively private battle between good, represented by an ability to give freely, and evil, embodied by selfishness.
- Subjects
NARRATION; POOR people; RICH people; FICTION writing techniques; FREE indirect speech; ORAL history
- Publication
Narrative, 2004, Vol 12, Issue 2, p151
- ISSN
1063-3685
- Publication type
Literary Criticism
- DOI
10.1353/nar.2004.0005