“Et après la fin du monde…” : critiques environnementales de l’industrialisation dans la littérature du Nord de la France et de la Belgique francophone (années 1840-1850)

Abstract

During the 1840s and 1850s, a period of accelerating industrialisation, the degradation of the environment became a subject of concern for several writers in northern France and French-speaking Belgium. Some saw industrialisation as a threat to the balance of the planet. Others deplored the contamination of the environment and bodies caused by factories. All of them were sceptical, even clearly opposed to the idea of progress through industry. In the romantic vein, they expressed a deep melancholy in the face of the ecological upheavals in their regions. In this article, we will see that this feeling of pensive sadness was a specific form of resistance to industrialisation.

Keywords

• collapse
• industrialisation
• pollution
• progress
• romanticism