Notes of the 15th/05/2012

“Coketown”  from Hard Times (second part)

The second part of the extract has an informative function: it explains how the city is based on work. It also has the function of expressing opinions and judging the structure of the buildings of the time. “You saw nothing in Coketown but what was severely workful” means that everything in the city had an utility. In this way Mr. Dickens makes a statement against art and architecture. In his description he uses the grotesque. The church is described in its architectural characteristic, with a square tower, four pinnacles on the door. The description tries to give the reader a mental image, that here is grotesque. The aim of the narrator is to criticize the utilitarian vision of the world that wanted the buildings exactly the same. There wasn’t creativity. Hegel spoke of alienation. Also the description were written in two colors: there weren’t flashy colors. This gives the idea of a world perceived in a categorical way: the white color represented Paradise, the black one meant the Hell. The repetitive syntax reminds the idea of the eternal return. There’s the triumph of the vague, of the chaos because there’s a shift in the theme choice. The use of imagination is not allowed in the Victorian literature because it doesn’t produce utility. The juxtaposition of the opposite (material and immaterial) is connected to the Manichaeism, that stated the existence of only two principles without anything between them. Everything has to be factual and marketable during Victorian Age

Here is represented also the idea of class and the relation between master and man.