Literature written in response to the 1811-12 Luddite revolt and resulting movement by workers against the English textile factories that displaced craftsmen in favor of machines.
Although at the time relatively little was written about the revolt—either in the press or in literary works—the Luddites and their cause became well known, and this local movement by a small number of displaced textile workers remains a familiar episode in English history. However, the Luddites are often wrongly associated simply with a distrust of technology when in fact Luddism is better characterized as an early movement that recognized the dangers and social costs associated with human dependence on new technology. The nineteenth-century figures who wrote about the 1811-12 rebellion focused on this aspect of the workers' struggle. While not all were directly sympathetic with the Luddites, almost every writer who discussed the disturbances acknowledged that the celebrated economic progress associated with industrialization failed to take into account the dramatic changes that emerging technology had inflicted on the lives of workers. The two most famous authors who wrote about the rebellion were the poet George Gordon, Lord Byron, who delivered an impassioned speech in the House of Lords defending the actions of the Luddites, and Charlotte Brontë, whose novel Shirley (1849), set during the time of the disturbances, offers a complex view of the changes precipitated by the new technology. Although the Romantic poets William Wordsworth, Percy Shelley, John Keats, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge did not directly acknowledge the revolt in their writing, some of their poems have been interpreted as supporting the cause of the workers. Less familiar to most readers today are the broadside poems and ballads written by workers in response to the new factories, as well as the poems, songs, threatening letters, petitions, and proclamations written by the Luddites themselves. Most accounts of and discussions about Luddism have been written by historians who note the paucity of responses to the event by contemporary writers. Critics who have written about the literature associated with the Luddites have discussed the “hidden” Luddite sympathies in the works of Romantic and Victorian writers, examined Brontë's attitude toward the rebellion and the recording of history in Shirley, and discussed the rhetorical strategies and style of the Luddites in their writings. Scholars have also noted that the lessons taught by the Luddites and their literary sympathizers are especially relevant in the twenty-first century, as computers and their associated technology have fundamentally altered the role of contemporary workers just as machines changed the lives of nineteenth-century craftsmen.
Although at the time relatively little was written about the revolt—either in the press or in literary works—the Luddites and their cause became well known, and this local movement by a small number of displaced textile workers remains a familiar episode in English history. However, the Luddites are often wrongly associated simply with a distrust of technology when in fact Luddism is better characterized as an early movement that recognized the dangers and social costs associated with human dependence on new technology. The nineteenth-century figures who wrote about the 1811-12 rebellion focused on this aspect of the workers' struggle. While not all were directly sympathetic with the Luddites, almost every writer who discussed the disturbances acknowledged that the celebrated economic progress associated with industrialization failed to take into account the dramatic changes that emerging technology had inflicted on the lives of workers. The two most famous authors who wrote about the rebellion were the poet George Gordon, Lord Byron, who delivered an impassioned speech in the House of Lords defending the actions of the Luddites, and Charlotte Brontë, whose novel Shirley (1849), set during the time of the disturbances, offers a complex view of the changes precipitated by the new technology. Although the Romantic poets William Wordsworth, Percy Shelley, John Keats, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge did not directly acknowledge the revolt in their writing, some of their poems have been interpreted as supporting the cause of the workers. Less familiar to most readers today are the broadside poems and ballads written by workers in response to the new factories, as well as the poems, songs, threatening letters, petitions, and proclamations written by the Luddites themselves. Most accounts of and discussions about Luddism have been written by historians who note the paucity of responses to the event by contemporary writers. Critics who have written about the literature associated with the Luddites have discussed the “hidden” Luddite sympathies in the works of Romantic and Victorian writers, examined Brontë's attitude toward the rebellion and the recording of history in Shirley, and discussed the rhetorical strategies and style of the Luddites in their writings. Scholars have also noted that the lessons taught by the Luddites and their literary sympathizers are especially relevant in the twenty-first century, as computers and their associated technology have fundamentally altered the role of contemporary workers just as machines changed the lives of nineteenth-century craftsmen.
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