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Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
No balance from the Treaty of Vienna: huge costs of the war caused
trade slumps, higher unemployment chaos and misery brought to
soldiers and sailors. discontent caused disorders: Luddities (artisans
under Ned Ludd) destroyed the machines which took away their jobs;
Brutal repression adopted by the ruling classing as attempt to maintain
their property and their wealth Firing on the crowd at St Peters
Fields (Manchester), ironically called Peterloo, where local militia shoot
on the audience of Henry Orator Hunt;
Policy of laissez-faire, government activity was minimal birth of a
religious movement called the Evangelicals. Goal was to raise
awareness of social problems and try to resolve them. They abolished
slave trade and brought basic education to working children, also tried
to reform prisons;
Period called the Regency (George III was mentally ill so his son, the
eventually George IV, was the Regent extravagant fashions, and
architectural works like Brighton Pavillon);
upper and middle classes lived regardless of these changes, though the
Romantic revolution had begun to develop. Women still precluded from having
different careers than the ones of wives and housewives.
Egoistical sublime
Third-person narrator;
Dialogue as the main narrative mode;
Passions and emotions not expressed directly;
Use of irony;