Working on a dream : Arbetarklass, arbetare och arbete som motiv i ett urval av Bruce Springsteens texter 1973-84

Sammanfattning: Bruce Springsteen is often referred to a as the blue collar or working man’s poet but how can he represent the working class since he only worked in manual labor for a week of his life? This paper tries to analyse how selected texts between 1973-84 are related to working class litterature and how this is perceived from the perspective of work and the worker. The analysis show that there are no general definitions regarding workingclass that can be used as a model or reference to working class literature. An alternative definition is based on reception and how the texts are read and perceived as working class by the reader. The findings are that Springsteen uses work and the worker in a very limited way in his texts and when he does, work is often something that is required to be able to do something else. It is only in a few cases Springsteen actually describes the work and the workers as for example in “Factory” and “Working on the Highway”.