Comparative Literature and Industrial Revolution

This paper presents research on some representations of industrial revolution in literature and in the visual art. The category of anthropocene allows for a deeper insight into environmental aspects of an issue usually looked at from the points of view of the history of technology, economics or civilization as well as consumerism. The analyzed texts of European culture make it possible to notice representations of industrial areas as European hearts of darkness, evoking geographically less remote versions of colonial exploitation. The author stresses the necessity to take into account the opposition between the Crystal Palace and its critics, and the space of industrial output, transcending this opposition. It keeps being a challenge for materialistic cultural criticism, aiming at taking into account the issues of the environment and moving away from a strict separation of nature and society, which is crucial to the modernity. Hence, an important part of this paper is a proposition to redefine the economical theory of value, in order to take into account the value of such objects as raw materials and the energy they contain. Such view of the comparative literature of the anthropocene demands acceptance for the category of the longue durée taken literary: the industrial revolution might have a history of 300 years, but it still lasts and is present in new places on Earth.

This paper presents research on some representations of industrial revolution in literature and in the visual art. The category of anthropocene allows for a deeper insight into environmental aspects of an issue usually looked at from the points of view of the history of technology, economics or civilization as well as consumerism. The analyzed texts of European culture make it possible to notice representations of industrial areas as European hearts of darkness, evoking geographically less remote versions of colonial exploitation. The author stresses the necessity to take into account the opposition between the Crystal Palace and its critics, and the space of industrial output, transcending this opposition. It keeps being a challenge for materialistic cultural criticism, aiming at taking into account the issues of the environment and moving away from a strict separation of nature and society, which is crucial to the modernity. Hence, an important part of this paper is a proposition to redefine the economical theory of value, in order to take into account the value of such objects as raw materials and the energy they contain. Such view of the comparative literature of the anthropocene demands acceptance for the category of the longue durée taken literary: the industrial revolution might have a history of 300 years, but it still lasts and is present in new places on Earth.