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Kevin Gilmartin's keynote, 'Raymond Williams' Experimental History of Romanticism'. Exploring Williams' interest in the writing of Cobbett, seeing him as more significant than those more traditionally canonical writers in understanding the Romantic response to... #rsaa19
the emerging industrialised modern economy and associated socio-political changes. Williams interested in the moral critique of industrial capitalism, arguing there remains' a claim to life' in those most caught up in the industrial complex.
Williams argues that the rapid industrialisation shaped a unique response, which was incomplete and confused, as the critique from writers like Cobbett was developing and evolving just as rapidly as industrial society itself. Williams contrasted Cobbett and Austen...
Cobbett 'described and campaigned' in his writing, in a way that Austen did not, and so has a link to slightly later novelists like Dickens. Austen and her characters occupied the homes that Cobbett drove by. Austen's work is 'internal', focussing on the nuances of one class...
while Cobbett's broader view considers classes (plural). Yet Pinch notes that it is not this clear cut, for example, Emma's observations from the shop door start to reveal the new ways women could experience commerce and society. Williams interested in Austen's...
portrayal of social norms, and the way she challenges this, while maintaining a sense of unity, despite the rapid change of her world. Austen as 'a historical resonant chronicle of confusion and change'. Here, Williams turns to the ways in which Romantic thinking...
still resonates in today's rapidly changing world. Hence, we can 'see Cobbett both in his time and in ours' (Williams). Williams invites us to see Romantic literature as a response to crisis that extends from their time to our own.
