The Work of the Sun

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Ted Underwood

   Pages 1-13

3. Light as Fluid Agency

   • Ted Underwood

   Pages 15-31

4. Energy and the Autonomy of Middle-Class Work

   • Ted Underwood

   Pages 33-54

5. Apollo, God of Enterprise

   • Ted Underwood

   Pages 55-88

6. Cowper’s Spontaneous Task

   • Ted Underwood

   Pages 89-108

7. Wordsworth and the Homelessness of Engines

   • Ted Underwood

   Pages 109-131

8. Sunlight and the Reification of Culture

   • Ted Underwood

   Pages 133-156

9. Energy Becomes Labor: The Role of Engineering Theory

   • Ted Underwood

   Pages 157-178

10. Productivism and the Popularization of the First Law of Thermodynamics

    • Ted Underwood

    Pages 179-192

11. Back Matter

    Pages 193-240

    PDF

At the end of the Eighteenth century, British writers began to celebrate work in a strangely indirect way. Instead of describing diligence as an attribute of character, poets and novelists increasingly identified work with impersonal 'energies' akin to natural force. Chemists traced mental and muscular work back to its source in sunlight, giving rise to the claim (beloved by Nineteenth-century journalists) that 'all the labour done under the sun is really done by it'. The Work of The Sun traces the emergence of this model of work, exploring its sources in middle-class consciousness and its implications for British literature and science.

• English literature
• Romanticism
• science
• William Wordsworth
• Wordsworth
• British and Irish Literature

'Underwood unearths important manuscript sources as well as a wide range of little-known works in physics, chemistry, engineering, and political economics, and demonstrates considerable comparative prowess in using them effectively to contextualize key shifts in literary and economic sensibility during the centuries in question.' - Bruce Clarke, European Romantic Review

TED UNDERWOOD is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA.

Policies and ethics