Tony Harrison: Them and [uz] I, II

Length / Form Sixteen-line sonnet

Allusion to Classical figure Demosthenes

Relationship to Classical text Demosthenes' stutter and Received Pronunciation (p.133).

Close translation of words/phrases/excerpts Demosthenes’ cry αἰαῖ, is transliterated as ‘ay, ay!’ (perhaps suggests the Yorkshire ‘aye’).

Classical/post-Classical intertexts Dedicated to ‘Professors Richard Hoggart and Leon Cortez’. Hoggart shares with Harrison the experience of a working class upbringing in Leeds and is best known for writing The Uses of Literacy: Aspects of Working Class Life (Chatto and Windus, 1957). Cortez was a British music-hall comedian, known for delivering the plots of operas and Shakespeare plays in cockney dialect.