Literature of England's Industrial Revolution

Santiago Fernández SánchezComplementos para la formación disciplinar en Lengua InglesaUnidad 3

England pre-Industrial Revolution

Most Englishmen were peasants.

Lived on a subsistency level.

Constant plagues and wars decimated the population

Literature pre-Industrial Revolution

Development of the novel and the satire

Importance of the figure of Jonathan Swift, author of Robinson Crusoe

Influence of Empirism

Pastoral poetry (Alexander Pope)

Arrival of the Industrial Revolution

Around the year 1760 everything changed. England would never be the same.

"for the first time in history, the living standards of the masses of ordinary people have begun to undergo sustained growth”

Robert E.Lucas Jr

A change in England

Cities grew, peasant life was abandoned.

Apparition of the “proletariat”, the new industrial working class

Literature as social reflection

The demand that lyric poetry be virginal ... is itself social in nature. It implies a protest against a social situation that every individual experiences as hostile, alien, cold, oppressive, and this situation is imprinted in reverse on the poetic work (T.W. Adorno)

Life conditions

‘I think I was well when mother died, but I have never been rightly strong sin' somewhere about that time. I began to work in a carding-room soon after, and fluff got into my lungs and poisoned me.'‘Fluff?' said Margaret inquiringly.‘Fluff,' repeated Bessy. ‘Little bits, as fly off fro' the cotton, when they're carding it, and fill the air till it looks all fine white dust. They say it winds round the lungs, and tightens them up. Anyhow, there's many a one works in a carding-room, that falls into a waste, coughing and spitting blood, because they're just poisoned by the fluff.'

Elizabeth Gaskell

Romanticism

Reaction against industrialization

Obsession with the supremacy of nature over human rationality

Inevitability of death

Romantization of pre-industrial past

William Blake

And did those feet in ancient timeWalk upon England's mountains green?And was the holy Lamb of GodOn England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance DivineShine forth upon our clouded hills?And was Jerusalem builded hereAmong these dark Satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold:Bring me my arrows of desire:Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold!Bring me my chariot of fire.

I will not cease from mental fight,Nor shall my sword sleep in my handTill we have built JerusalemIn England's green and pleasant land.

“Jerusalem”, a romantic anthem against the industrialization (“these dark Satanic mills”)

Machines as menaces

Lots of intellectuals and artists saw industrial progress as a threat to humanity.

Luddite movement protested against new machines.

William Wordsworth

Let Nature be your Teacher...Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;Our meddling intellectMis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:We murder to dissect.

Enough of Science and of Art;Close up those barren leaves;Come forth, and bring with you a heartThat watches and receives.

“The Tables Turned”

Romantic poets reivindicated the power of nature.

Folk songs

The working class created songs in which they reflected the miseries of a very hard existence.

One of the best examples is “Poverty Knock”, from the 2nd Industrial Revolution.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Blw5_H9aw-U

Poverty, poverty knock,My loom it is saying all day.Poverty poverty knock,Gaffer's too skinny to pay.Poverty, poverty knock,Keeping one eye on the clock. And I know I can guttle When I hear my shuttleGo poverty, poverty knock

Second Industrial Revolution

From 1860 on, and thanks to the development of the sources of energy (gas or oil), the internal combustion engine and the means of transport England enters a second phase of the Industrial Revolution.

The rise of the novel

Coinciding with a moment in which alphabetization began to be more usual and printing and distributing became easier novels started being immensely popular.

Social and industrial novels, which depicted directly in a realistic style the misery of working class characters, were the most prominent

Charles Dickens

Author of some of the most famous novels in English language (such as Oliver Twist, David Copperfield or A Tale of Two Cities), was the prevalent example of a realistic, social novelist.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

A Tale of Two Cities

Bibliography

Reed, Lawrence W “Child Labor and the British Industrial Revolution.” Freedom Daily

Rogers, Pat (Ed): The Oxford Illustrated History of English Literature. Oxford: OUP, 1987.

VV.AA The Norton Anthology of English Literature, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012