Product Information
The 19th-century's steam railway epitomized modernity's relentlessly onrushing advance. In this work Ian Carter delves into the cultural impact of train technology, and how this was represented in British society. Why for example did Britain possess no great railway novel? The work's first half tests that assertion by comparing fiction and images by some canonical British figures (Turner, Dickens, Arnold Bennett) against selected French and Russian competitors: Tolstoy, Zola, Monet, Manet. The second half proposes that if high cultural work on the British steam railway is thin, then this does not mean that all British culture ignored this revolutionary artefact. Detailed discussions of comic fiction, crime fiction and cartoons reveal a popular fascination with railways tumbling from vast (and hitherto unexplored) stores of critically overlooked genres. A final chapter contemplates cultural correlations of the steam railway's eclipse. If this was the epitome of modernity, then does the triumph of diesel and electric trains, of cars and planes, signal a decisive shift to postmodernity?Product Identifiers
PublisherManchester University Press
ISBN-139780719059667
eBay Product ID (ePID)91480006
Product Key Features
Number of Pages352 Pages
Publication NameRailways and Culture in Britain: the Epitome of Modernity
LanguageEnglish
SubjectHistory
Publication Year2001
TypeTextbook
AuthorIan Carter
SeriesStudies in Popular Culture
Dimensions
Item Height234 mm
Item Width156 mm
Additional Product Features
Country/Region of ManufactureUnited Kingdom
Title_AuthorIan Carter