Labouring bodies

This chapter considers Irish author Oliver Goldsmith’s letters written to friends and family between 1754 and 1764, and his epistolary narrative The Citizen of the World; or, Letters from a Chinese Philosopher (1762), both of which figure the animal body as both a metaphor and a physical embodiment of his particular struggle within an eighteenth-century literary marketplace. As a metaphor, the animal body is used to illustrate the effects of capitalism and imperialism on London culture, leading to the commodification of work animals and hack writers alike. Goldsmith’s commiseration with subjugated work animals speaks to an essential experience as an Irish hack writer in London during a time in his career when he was struggling to gain literary success. This physical embodiment of labour finds expression through the animal metaphors in Goldsmith’s texts, such as the toiling turnspit dog or Rousseauian captive monkey which frets and scampers at the end of its chain. In sum, the chapter engages with ideas of embodiment and seeks to establish Goldsmith’s letters within an epistolary and animal studies context, and proves that Goldsmith draws a parallel between labouring work animals and the ceaseless nature of writing in an increasingly competitive literary market.