Abstract
This chapter examines notions of progress, and particularly the role of science and technology in redefining human progress, in the writings of Blake, Coleridge, Southey, Percy Shelley and Mary Shelley. The Romantic poets’ reactions to the effects of the industrial revolution were almost wholly negative, yet Coleridge, Wordsworth and Shelley were fascinated by the scientific discoveries that enabled the revolution, and toyed with notions of perfectibility. Mary Shelley, on the other hand, offers a devastating critique of such hubris. Analysis of Bleak House and Hard Times demonstrates how Dickens was influenced by this complex of Romantic ideas of progress in his critiques of contemporary society. In these novels from the early 1850s he embodies the potentially dehumanizing effects of technology and asserts the importance of moving closer toward an understanding of the natural world, and of our place within it, as the true measure of human progress.
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Cook, P. (2018). Progress. In: The Romantic Legacy of Charles Dickens. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96791-2_4
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