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  3. The Lives of Machines: The Industrial Imaginary in Victorian Literature and Culture

The Lives of Machines: The Industrial Imaginary in Victorian Literature and Culture

Tamara Ketabgian
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"The Lives of Machines is intelligent, closely argued, and persuasive, and puts forth a contention that will unsettle the current consensus about Victorian attitudes toward the machine."

---Jay Clayton, Vanderbilt University

Today we commonly describe ourselves as machines that "let off steam" or feel "under pressure." The Lives of Machines investigates how Victorian technoculture came to shape this language of human emotion so pervasively and irrevocably and argues that nothing is more intensely human and affecting than the nonhuman. Tamara Ketabgian explores the emergence of a modern and more mechanical view of human nature in Victorian literature and culture.

Treating British literature from the 1830s to the 1870s, this study examines forms of feeling and community that combine the vital and the mechanical, the human and the nonhuman, in surprisingly hybrid and productive alliances. Challenging accounts of industrial alienation that still persist, the author defines mechanical character and feeling not as erasures or negations of self, but as robust and nuanced entities in their own right. The Lives of Machines thus offers an alternate cultural history that traces sympathies between humans, animals, and machines in novels and nonfiction about factory work as well as in other unexpected literary sites and genres, whether domestic, scientific, musical, or philosophical. Ketabgian historicizes a model of affect and community that continues to inform recent theories of technology, psychology, and the posthuman.

The Lives of Machines will be of interest to students of British literature and history, history of science and of technology, novel studies, psychoanalysis, and postmodern cultural studies.

Cover image: "Power Loom Factory of Thomas Robinson," from Andrew Ure, The Philosophy of Manufactures (London: Charles Knight, 1835), frontispiece.

DIGITALCULTUREBOOKS: a collaborative imprint of the University of Michigan Press and the University of Michigan Library

  • Cover
  • Dedication
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction
  • Prosthesis
    • Chapter 1: Human Parts and Prosthetic Networks: The Victorian Factory and Mesmeric Forces Chapter 1: Human Parts and Prosthetic Networks: The Victorian Factory and Mesmeric Forces
  • Animal Machine
    • Chapter 2: “Melancholy Mad Elephants”: Affect and the Animal Machine in Hard Times Chapter 2: “Melancholy Mad Elephants”: Affect and the Animal Machine in Hard Times
    • Chapter 3: Brute Appetites: Labor and Leisure in Mary Barton and Early Victorian Manchester Chapter 3: Brute Appetites: Labor and Leisure in Mary Barton and Early Victorian Manchester
  • Energy System
    • Chapter 4: Psychic Forces: Steam, Water, and Mechanical Perception in 
The Mill on the Floss Chapter 4: Psychic Forces: Steam, Water, and Mechanical Perception in 
The Mill on the Floss
    • Chapter 5: A “Musical Steam Engine”: Sympathy, Technique, and Industrial Community Chapter 5: A “Musical Steam Engine”: Sympathy, Technique, and Industrial Community
  • Afterword
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
    • Primary Sources: Novels and Fiction Primary Sources: Novels and Fiction
    • Other Primary Sources Other Primary Sources
    • Secondary Sources Secondary Sources
  • Index
Citable Link
Published: 2011
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license
ISBN(s)
  • 978-0-472-05140-3 (paper)
  • 978-0-472-90035-0 (open access)
Subject
  • Literary Studies:British and Irish Literatures
  • History:Intellectual History
  • History:European History
  • Cultural Studies

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"Power Loom Factory of Thomas Robinson", from Andrew Ure, The Philosophy of Manufacturers (London: Charles Knight, 1835), frontispiece.

Power Loom Factory of Thomas Robinson

FIG. 1. "Power Loom Factory of Thomas Robinson", from Andrew Ure, The Philosophy of Manufacturers (London: Charles Knight, 1835), frontispiece.

"Table", from Peter Gaskell, Artisans and Machinery (London: John W. Parker, 1836), 399.

Table

FIG. 2. "Table", from Peter Gaskell, Artisans and Machinery (London: John W. Parker, 1836), 399.

J. M. W. Turner, The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to Her Last Berth to Be Broken Up (1838). Oil on canvas, 90.7 x 121.6 cm. Courtesy of the National Gallery, London/Art Resource, NY.

J. M. W. Turner

FIG. 3. J. M. W. Turner, The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to Her Last Berth to Be Broken Up (1838). Oil on canvas, 90.7 x 121.6 cm. Courtesy of the National Gallery, London/Art Resource, NY.

"Stephenson's Locomotive", from Robert H. Thurston, A History of the Growth of the Steam-Engine (New York: D. Appleton, 1878), 204.

Stephenson's Locomotive

FIG. 4. "Stephenson's Locomotive", from Robert H. Thurston, A History of the Growth of the Steam-Engine (New York: D. Appleton, 1878), 204.

Watt's Engine with Separate Condenser, from Samuel Smiles, Lives of Boulton and Watt, Principally from the Original Soho Mss. (London: John Murray, 1865), 130.

Watt's Engine with Separate Condenser

FIG. 5. Watt's Engine with Separate Condenser, from Samuel Smiles, Lives of Boulton and Watt, Principally from the Original Soho Mss. (London: John Murray, 1865), 130.

Karl Kliřc, "The Bayreuth Musical Steam Engine", from Humoristische Blätter, August 20, 1876, reprinted in John Grand-Carteret, Richard Wagner en caricatures: 130 reproductions (Paris: Larousse), 111.

The Bayreuth Musical Steam Engine

FIG. 6. Karl Kliřc, "The Bayreuth Musical Steam Engine", from Humoristische Blätter, August 20, 1876, reprinted in John Grand-Carteret, Richard Wagner en caricatures: 130 reproductions (Paris: Larousse), 111.

9544598.0001.001-00000007.jpg

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