굶주림의 시학: 에베네저 엘리엇의『곡물법 시편』에 나타난 사회 비평

The Poetics of Hunger: Social Criticism in Ebenezer Elliott’s Corn Law Rhymes

This paper investigates the political and social significance of Ebenezer Elliott’s Corn Law Rhymes, with particular emphasis on his response to the Corn Laws and the wider injustices of early nineteenth-century Britain. Through close textual analysis, it examines how Elliott’s poetry operates both as a trenchant critique of economic oppression and as a mobilizing discourse for working-class resistance. Harnessing the rhetorical power of poetry, Elliott articulates the lived experiences of the poor, especially under the burden of inflated grain prices. His work, however, resists confinement to its historical moment, continuing to resonate as a cultural and political resource for contemporary reflections on inequality, social justice, and democratic agency. Far from a relic of the past, Elliott’s poetry exemplifies literature’s enduring capacity to voice the marginalized and to envision transformative possibilities across historical and modern contexts.