Mathew Arnold, Stanzas From the Grande Chartruse - 19th Century Britain.

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Erik Jaccard

English 230 AB---Dalley

3/14/2001

Final Exam

Part I

                        “Wandering between two worlds, one dead,

                          The other powerless to be born,

                          With nowhere yet to rest my head,

                          Like these, on earth I wait forlorn.”

                                ---Mathew Arnold, Stanzas From the Grande Chartruse

        As these portentous and transitory lines suggest, 19th century inhabitants of Britain existed very literally beneath the outstretched and looming arms of an immense and ambiguous shadow. After all, it was in 19th century Britain that humankind was first introduced to the intensely exponential rates of change that would come to define the endeavors of humankind thereafter.  Slumped loosely upon the errant back of “progress” was the concept of time, which had for eons before, rolled along with all the ferociousness of the river Thames.  With the inception of the Industrial Revolution, however, the pace at which humankind lived, loved, and lost began to burgeon into something altogether mysterious, hopeful, and, at the same time, terribly frightening and uncontrollable.  Each succeeding generation began to be defined by the technology and controversy of its day, each “age” noticeably marked by the incipient generation to succeed it and the lamented generations already fading into memory.  

        Technology advanced with lightning-quick speed, carrying with it new mediums of expression (particularly within the sphere of media) and the rapid dissemination of information and ideas bred revolutions in scientific, social, and political thought. It often seemed as though each fantastically new creation or revolutionary thought possessed the potential to evolve into a Frankenstein-type monster, impervious to measures of control or correction.  The effect this process of constant change exerted upon art and artists is no less striking.  Whereas the Baroque period may be said to have lasted for 150 years, even the most liberal estimates place the duration of the Romantic period at only 40 years (approx. 1790-1830).  Though many aspects of this rapidly evolving world provoked comment by artists and thinkers, one of the most conspicuous, the rise of industrialism, merits special attention.  For without the rapid advances in technology produced by the revolution, and without the effects of these advances,  ideas, technologies, and the basis for many further “shocks” to the establishment would not have been possible.  

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        The rise of Industrialism, though not written of as specifically as it would be later on, is addressed to a degree in the literature of the early late 18th and early 19th centuries.  However, industrial description prior to 1830 existed primarily to function as antithetical elements to the rapturous and idyllic natural world as presented in the works of authors such as Blake and Wordsworth. Blake, in his Songs of Experience (1794 pp. 33-41), more or less condemns the urban living experience as heartless and cruel.  Expressing sympathy and sadness in the face of the “Chimney-sweeper’s cry” and “the hapless soldier’s sigh,” Blake ...

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