From ancient times, literature and the arts have portrayed, and criticism and
theory have discussed, differences in people's social class and history. But
with the spread and maturation of capitalism throughout its various stages,
economic and other disparities have more visibly polarized wealthy and poor
classes, city residents and ghetto dwellers, inhabitants of the first and
third worlds, whites and people of color, men and women. Class formations,
class consciousness, and class tensions form part of the historical experience of
modernization, and theory and criticism have been grapplin…
