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Essay on Dickens and education in the opening chapters of Hard Times
In the opening chapters of Hard Times, Dickens depicts Coketown’s educational system in a disapproving manner. This is achieved by the narrative style, the characters, and the use of humour in the text, all of which present the schooling of children in a utilitarian society satirically.
The titles used by Dickens for the novel’s chapters ridicule the teaching methods depicted in the text. The first chapter is called ‘The One thing Needful’, and the second ‘Murdering the Innocents’. These titles are both quotes from the Bible, and therefore mock the importance that educators such as Gradgrind attach to factual knowledge by implying that it is their god. …
What is the significance of memory for and in literary modernism?
According to Poplawski (2003, p vii), modernism continues to be widely acknowledged as probably the most important and influential artistic-cultural phenomenon of the twentieth century. Poplawski further notes, that modernism is characterised by an avant-garde experimentalism and its concern for radical innovation in artistic form, style, content and method. Intellectual and artistic movements within the 19th century, such as impressionism, imagism, symbolism, futurism, and expressionism, paved the way for the emergence of literary modernism. Indeed, this influential paradigm demonstrated a profound concern with themes of alienation, fragmentation, and the loss of shared values and meanings Poplawski (2003, ix).…