Literary Cultures, Social Networks and the Victorian Railway Worker

这一创新的博士项目调查了与铁路工作相关的被遗忘的文学文化史，涉及到对工业史、印刷文化和文学以及工人阶级文化的跨学科研究。如本申请第8节所述，它的设计是为了适应和促进新出现的全国资源管理优先事项，并反映--并纠正--在博物馆背景下工人阶级文化和扫盲的相对不足。作为对英国工人阶级文化的文学和历史研究的干预，它具有学术意义，并对文化遗产组织评估文学文化如何有助于解释科学、工业和技术方面的资产具有重要意义。与许多致力于“改进”的产业工人一样，19世纪及以后的铁路工人试图通过参与文学文化来获得文化资本。这些文化包括边歌文化和为表演而写的诗(例如，在社会会议或特殊场合)、散文和小说，特别是在铁路工人撰写的和为铁路工人撰写的期刊上发表的散文和小说，出版的诗集、报纸稿件、自传和传记。它们还包括正式和非正式的文学社团和阅读团体。学者们知道这样的著作是存在的，但它们以前从未受到持续的关注。在二十世纪或二十一世纪，对工人阶级文学的研究从来没有集中在职业上，关于铁路文学的讨论集中在旅客对铁路的文学表现上，而不是那些直接参与建造、维护和运营英国铁路网庞大新基础设施的男人(和很少的女人)。阿尔弗雷德·丁尼生(Alfred Tennyson)在维多利亚时代最著名的诗歌之一《洛克斯利大厅》(Locksley Hall)中犯下了著名的失态，他在诗中认为火车在凹槽轨道上运行。例如，几位工人阶级铁路工人的作品中兴高采烈地提到了这一点，他们故意在作品中展示自己对铁路术语和运营的高超技术知识，以区别于中产阶级的观察者。学生将能够利用国家铁路博物馆广泛而迄今未得到充分利用的铁路文献，再加上对英国各地的小档案馆和主要档案馆的研究，来开发一个原创的、令人兴奋的博士学位，潜在的影响超出了学术界。这门课程设计得足够广泛，使学生能够在这个实质性的领域内追求自己的兴趣，以NRM工作人员在历史术语和操作方面的专业知识和布莱尔教授在工人阶级文学文化方面的专业知识为指导，并辅之以量身定制的培训计划。关键问题可能包括但不限于：1.为什么这一时期有如此多的铁路工人从事文学活动，无论是个人还是集体，这种活动有什么利害关系？2.对这些活动的调查以什么方式揭示了铁路工作中人类基础设施的历史？文学追求在多大程度上是在铁路就业的等级结构内或跨等级结构进行的？3.这些文本中的自我表现是否与从上方书写的表现相冲突，即19世纪和20世纪的铁路工作历史？4.文学作品如何构建和表现这一时期的铁路工作和技术，以及跨世纪是否有明显的变化？5.铁路工人的作品是批评还是颂扬工业劳动的做法，以及这种变化可能会因职位而异，与所选体裁有关？6.对铁路工人和文学文化的研究如何改变对工人阶级文化的学术理解以及对劳动生活经验的理解？

This innovative PhD project investigates a forgotten history of literary cultures connected to railway work, involving interdisciplinary research into the history of industry, into print cultures and literature, and into working-class culture. It is deliberately designed to fit with and contribute to an emerging priority of the NRM, as outlined under section 8 in this application, and to reflect upon - and redress - the relative under-representation of working-class culture and literacy in museum contexts. It is of scholarly significance as an intervention in literary and historical studies of working-class culture in Britain, and of importance to cultural heritage organizations in assessing how literary cultures can assist in interpreting holdings in science, industry and technology. In common with many industrial workers bent on 'improvement', railway workers in the nineteenth century and beyond sought to acquire cultural capital through their participation in literary cultures. Such cultures include broadside song culture and verse written for performance (i.e. at society meetings or special occasions), prose and fiction, particularly as published in periodicals written by and for railway workers, published volumes of poems, newspaper contributions, autobiography and biography. They also include literary societies and reading groups, formal and informal. Scholars are aware that such writings exist, but they have never before received sustained attention. No previous twentieth or twenty-first century study of working-class literature has focused on profession, and discussions of railway literature have concentrated on literary representations of railways by travellers, not by those men (and few women) directly involved in constructing, maintaining and operating the vast new infrastructure of the British railway network. Alfred Tennyson's famous gaffe in one of the Victorian period's best-known poems, 'Locksley Hall', in which he believed that trains ran on grooved rails, is, for instance, referenced with glee in the writings of several working-class railwaymen, who deliberately displayed their superior technical knowledge of the terminology and operations of railways in their works to differentiate themselves from middle-class observers. The student will be able to use the National Railway Museum's extensive and hitherto underused holdings of railway literature, supplemented with research in minor and major archives across Britain, to develop an original and exciting PhD with potential impact beyond academia. The topic is designedly broad enough to enable the student to pursue his/her interests within this substantial field, guided by NRM staff's specialist expertise in historical terminology and operations and Prof Blair's expertise in working-class literary cultures, and supported by a tailored programme of training. Key questions may include, but are not limited to:1. Why did so many railway workers in this period engage in literary activity, whether individual or collective, and what was at stake in such activities? 2. In what ways does the investigation of these activities shed new light on the history of human infrastructures in railway work? To what extent do literary pursuits operate within or across the hierarchical structures of railway employment?3. Does the self-representation in these texts conflict with representations written 'from above', i.e. nineteenth and twentieth-century histories of railway work? 4. How do literary productions construct and represent railway work and technology in this period, and are there discernible shifts across the century? 5. Do the writings of railway workers critique the practices of industrial labour or celebrate them, and how might this vary by position and in relation to chosen genre?6. How does the study of railway workers and literary culture alter scholarly understandings of working-class culture, and understandings of the lived experience of labour?